Cassiopeia A is a the remnant of a supernova that occurred 300 years ago and the brightest source of radio waves outside of our own Sun. It is located 99.4 light-years from Earth.Įpsilon Cassiopeiae (ε Cas, Segin) is a hot (15 200 K) blue-white giant star and is the dimmest of the five, at a distance of 442 light-years from Earth.Ĭassiopeia also contains some other interesting stuff: ρ Cassiopeiae and V509 Cassiopeiae are yellow hypergiants and two of the most luminous stars in the Milky Way, with ρ Cas being more than ninety million times the size of the Sun and around half a million times more powerful. Gus Grissom, an astronaut who took part in Mercury and Gemini missions and who died in the Apollo 1 accident named the star “Navi”, after his middle name backwards, as the star was commonly used as a navigational aid during space missions.ĭelta Cassiopeiae (δ Cas, Ruchbah) is a warm (8400 K) blue-white star, part of an eclipsing binary system. It is by far the most powerful of the stars in Cassiopeia but only the third brightest* as it is located 613 light-years from Earth. Gamma Cassiopeiae (γ Cas, Tsih) is a hot (31 000 K) blue subgiant eruptive variable binary star, the prototype of the shell type of variable stars. It is the second brightest of the stars in Cassiopeia and varies in apparent magnitude (brightness) between +2.25 to +2.31. It is the brightest of the stars in Cassiopeia.īeta Cassiopeiae (β Cas, Caph) is a warm (7100 K) yellow-white giant variable binary star 54.5 light-years from Earth. The term “constellation” refers to a region of sky, so the constellation of Cassiopeia technically contains hundreds of stars, but what most people think of as Cassiopeia is the stretched ‘W’ shape made by the five brightest stars.Īlpha Cassiopeiae (α Cas, Schedar) is a cool (4500 K) orange giant star located 229 light-years from Earth. ISBN 978-0691135564.I am not really an astronomer or an astrophysicist (my expertise and interest is in the areas of nuclear and particle physics) but I will make an exception for the constellation of Cassiopeia. Stars and Planets Guide, Collins, London. "Infrared echoes near the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A". * Krause O, Rieke GH, Birkmann SM, Le Floc'h E, Gordon KD, Egami E, Bieging J, Hughes JP, Young ET, Hinz JL, Quanz SP, Hines DC (2005). The scientific description of this star was written by Tycho Brahe, and its appearance is said to have lead Johannes Kepler to become an astronomer. The supernova known as Tycho's Star, or SN1572, was widely observed in Cassiopeia in 1572. Both are open clusters and being 7th apparent magnitude objects they are easy targets with binoculars. Two Messier objects, Messier 52 (NGC 7654) and Messier 103 (NGC 581) are located in Cassiopeia. The famous "W" of Cassiopeia would become a zig-zag pattern with the Sun at the leftmost end, closest to ε Cas. If we were to observe Earth's Sun from Alpha Centauri, the Sun would appear to be in Cassiopeia as a yellow-white 0.5 magnitude star. The star η Cas is a nearby (19.4 ly) binary star comprising a yellow Sun-like dwarf and an orange dwarf star. Cassiopeia contains two stars visible to the naked eye that rank among the most luminous in the galaxy: ρ Cas and V509 Cas.
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