zodiac
The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The pat ...
Cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
Flamsteed designation
A Flamsteed designation is a combination of a number and constellation name that uniquely identifies most naked eye stars in the modern constellations visible from southern England. They are named for John Flamsteed who first used them while co ...
. It is faintly visible to the naked eye as a white-hued star with an
apparent visual magnitude
Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's lig ...
of 5.89. The star is moving away from the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of 23 km/s, having come to within some 1.2 million years ago.
This is a chemically peculiar
A-type main-sequence star
An A-type main-sequence star (A V) or A dwarf star is a main-sequence (hydrogen-burning) star of spectral type A and luminosity class V (five). These stars have spectra defined by strong hydrogen Balmer absorption lines. They measure between ...
Lambda Boötis star
A Lambda Boötis star is a type of chemically peculiar star which has an unusually low abundance of iron peak elements in its surface layers. One possible explanation for this is that it is the result of accretion of metal
A metal (from Gre ...
displaying strongly-depleted
iron peak
The iron peak is a local maximum in the vicinity of Fe ( Cr, Mn, Fe, Co and Ni) on the graph of the abundances of the chemical elements.
For elements lighter than iron on the periodic table, nuclear fusion releases energy. For iron, and f ...
and
alpha process
The alpha process, also known as the alpha ladder, is one of two classes of nuclear fusion reactions by which stars convert helium into heavier elements, the other being the triple-alpha process.
The triple-alpha process consumes only helium, a ...
elements, but otherwise relatively normal solar abundances. The star shows no variability down to a detection limit of 1.6 millimagnitudes. It is 264 million years old with a relatively low
projected rotational velocity
Stellar rotation is the angular motion of a star about its axis. The rate of rotation can be measured from the spectrum of the star, or by timing the movements of active features on the surface.
The rotation of a star produces an equatorial bulg ...
of 18 km/s. 50 Cancri has 2.1 times the mass of the Sun and is radiating 11 times the
Sun's luminosity
The solar luminosity (), is a unit of radiant flux (power emitted in the form of photons) conventionally used by astronomers to measure the luminosity of stars, galaxies and other celestial objects in terms of the output of the Sun.
One nominal ...
infrared excess
An infrared excess is a measurement of an astronomical source, typically a star, that in their spectral energy distribution has a greater measured infrared flux than expected by assuming the star is a blackbody radiator. Infrared excesses are oft ...
, which most likely indicates a
debris disk
A debris disk (American English), or debris disc (Commonwealth English), is a circumstellar disk of dust and debris in orbit around a star. Sometimes these disks contain prominent rings, as seen in the image of Fomalhaut on the right. Debris di ...
in orbit around the host star. A
blackbody
A black body or blackbody is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, regardless of frequency or angle of incidence. The name "black body" is given because it absorbs all colors of light. A black body ...
model of the emission shows a two component fit, with the warm section having a temperature of at a radius of from the star, and a cool component at with a separation of .