Wednesday 2 December 2020

Astrognome 100 Great Stars No 89 Tejat Posterior

 

Tejat Posterior

Tejat Posterior is probably better known as the star Mu Gemini. The meaning of the name Tejat Posterior is unknown but some Arabic sources suggest the name refers to the asterism formed by the stars mu, gamma, nu, eta and xi. Mu lies at a distance of about 230 light years.




Mu is a red giant star with a spectrum of M3 and having a surface temperature of only around 3,500 degrees compared to our Sun which has a temperature of 5,800 degrees.

With a listed magnitude of 2.9 it is the 4th brightest star in Gemini. It varies slightly in brightness between magnitude 2.7 and 3.0 and is classified as an irregular variable star with a period ranging between 72 and 2,000 days.



No comments:

Post a Comment