Nu Fornacis, Latinized from ν Fornacis, is a single,

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 ...

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 blue-white in hue and faintly 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 ...

that fluctuates around 4.69. This body is located approximately 370 light years distant from the Sun based on parallax, and is drifting further away with a radial velocity of +18.5 km/s. It is a candidate member of the Pisces-Eridanus stellar stream, which suggests an age of 120 million years or less. This object is an

Ap star Ap and Bp stars are chemically peculiar stars (hence the "p") of spectral types A and B which show overabundances of some metals, such as strontium, chromium and europium. In addition, larger overabundances are often seen in praseodymium and neo ...

with a stellar classification of B9.5IIIspSi matching a

late Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effect, ...

B-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 ...

. The 'Si' suffix indicates an abundance anomaly of silicon. It is an Alpha² Canum Venaticorum variable that ranges from magnitude 4.68 down to 4.73 with a period of 1.89 days – the same as its rotational period. It is 3.65 times as massive and 245 times as luminous as the Sun, with 3.44 times the Sun's diameter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nu Fornacis B-type giants Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variables Ap stars Fornacis, Nu Durchmusterung objects Fornax (constellation) 012767 009677 0612