Beta Fornacis (Beta For, β Fornacis, β For) is the Bayer designation for a solitary star in the southern constellation of

Fornax Fornax () is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, partly ringed by the celestial river Eridanus. Its name is Latin for furnace. It was named by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1756. Fornax is one of the 88 modern ...

. It is visible to the naked eye 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 4.46. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 18.89 mas, it is located around 173 light years away from the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. At that distance, the visual magnitude is reduced by an interstellar extinction factor of 0.1. This is an

evolved Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

, G-type

giant star A giant star is a star with substantially larger radius and luminosity than a main-sequence (or ''dwarf'') star of the same surface temperature.Giant star, entry in ''Astronomy Encyclopedia'', ed. Patrick Moore, New York: Oxford University Press ...

with a stellar classification of G8 III. It is a

red clump Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondary ...

giant, which means it has undergone helium flash and is currently generating energy through the fusion of helium at its core. The star has an estimated 1.53 times the mass of the Sun and has expanded to 11 times the Sun's radius. It is radiating over 55 times the

solar 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 ...

from its outer atmosphere at an effective temperature of 4,820 K. Beta Fornacis has a

visual companion In observational astronomy, a double star or visual double is a pair of stars that appear close to each other as viewed from Earth, especially with the aid of optical telescopes. This occurs because the pair either forms a binary star (i.e. a ...

, CCDM J02491-3224B, which has an

of approximately 14.0. As of 1928, it lay at an angular separation of 4.80

arc second A minute of arc, arcminute (arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of one degree. Since one degree is of a turn (or complete rotation), one minute of arc is of a turn. The n ...

s along a

position angle In astronomy, position angle (usually abbreviated PA) is the convention for measuring angles on the sky. The International Astronomical Union defines it as the angle measured relative to the north celestial pole (NCP), turning positive into the ...

of 67°. Located around three degrees to the southwest is the

globular cluster A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars. Globular clusters are bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards their centers. They can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of membe ...

NGC 1049.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beta Fornacis G-type giants Horizontal-branch stars Double stars Fornax (constellation) Fornacis, Beta CD-32 01025 017652 013147 841