Tuesday 22 September 2020

Astrognome 100 Great Stars No 32 Deneb Kaitos

 

Deneb Kaitos

In a bright constellation such as Orion a star which shines at magnitude 2.0 would not really attract any attention but Deneb Kaitos or Diphda which means the ‘Frog’ is actually the brightest star in the constellation of Cetus the Whale.



Cetus is a large but difficult to identify constellation due to the number of faint stars. With a magnitude of 2.0 Deneb Kaitos is a bit of a search light in the constellation. It is a K0 orange giant star with a temperature of 4,700 degrees and lies at a distance of 97 light years.

But what makes it so interesting for an old star is that it is a very strong source of X rays while normally older stars produce fewer x rays and astronomers are not quite sure why.



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