Epsilon Apodis, Latinized from ε Apodis, is the

Bayer designation A Bayer designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek or Latin letter followed by the genitive form of its parent constellation's Latin name. The original list of Bayer designations contained 1,564 stars. T ...

for a

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make ...

in the southern circumpolar constellation of

Apus Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. First depicted on a celestial globe by Petrus ...

. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 5.06, which is bright enough to be viewed from dark suburban skies. Based upon

parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening, nearby object ...

measurements, it is at a distance of roughly from Earth. EpsilonApsLightCurve

Based upon a

stellar classification In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting t ...

of B3 V, this is a massive, B-type main sequence star that is generating energy through the fusion of hydrogen at its core. Epsilon Apodis has more than six times the mass of the Sun and nearly four times the Sun's radius. It is radiating 1,614 times as much luminosity as the Sun from its outer envelope at an

effective temperature The effective temperature of a body such as a star or planet is the temperature of a black body that would emit the same total amount of electromagnetic radiation. Effective temperature is often used as an estimate of a body's surface temperature ...

of 17,050 K. At this heat, it has a blue-white glow that is a characteristic of B-type stars. It is spinning rapidly, with a

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 bulge ...

of 255 km/s giving a lower bound for the

azimuth An azimuth (; from ar, اَلسُّمُوت, as-sumūt, the directions) is an angular measurement in a spherical coordinate system. More specifically, it is the horizontal angle from a cardinal direction, most commonly north. Mathematicall ...

al velocity along the equator. Epsilon Apodis is classified as a Gamma Cassiopeiae type

variable star A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth (its apparent magnitude) changes with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are classified as e ...

and its brightness varies between magnitudes 4.99 and 5.04.

Naming

In Chinese caused by adaptation of the European southern hemisphere constellations into the Chinese system, (), meaning ''

Exotic Bird Exotic may refer to: Mathematics and physics * Exotic R4, a differentiable 4-manifold, homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to the Euclidean space R4 *Exotic sphere, a differentiable ''n''-manifold, homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to the ordinar ...

'', refers to an asterism consisting of ε Apodis, ζ Apodis, ι Apodis, β Apodis, γ Apodis, δ Octantis, δ¹ Apodis, η Apodis and α Apodis. Consequently, ε Apodis itself is known as (, en, the Ninth Star of Exotic Bird.)

References

External links

Simbad

Image Epsilon Apodis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Epsilon Apodis 124771 Apus (constellation) Apodis, Epsilon B-type main-sequence stars Gamma Cassiopeiae variable stars Be stars 070248 5336 Durchmusterung objects