32 Cygni (32 Cyg, Omicron² Cyg, ο² Cyg) is the

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 ...

for a

binary star A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in wh ...

system in the Cygnus

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

. It is a 4th magnitude star, which can be seen with the naked eye under suitably dark skies.

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 objects ...

measurements give an estimated distance of 1,100

light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

s (320

parsec The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to or (au), i.e. . The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry, and ...

s) from the Earth. However, Schröder et al. (2007) suggest the actual value, after correcting for

Malmquist bias The Malmquist bias is an effect in observational astronomy which leads to the preferential detection of intrinsically bright objects. It was first described in 1922 by Swedish astronomer Gunnar Malmquist (1893–1982), who then greatly elaborated ...

, may be closer to 1,174 light-years (360 parsecs). Although it is a spectrsocopic binary with components that cannot be separated visually, it has two entries in the Henry Draper Catalogue, with identical magnitudes and positions, but showing the spectral types of the two components. The Bayer letter ο has been variously applied to two or three of the stars 30, 31, and 32 Cygni. 32 Cygni has been designated as either ο² or ο³ Cygni. For clarity, it is preferred to use the

32 Cygni rather than one of the Bayer designations. The primary component in this system, 32 Cygni A, has a

stellar classification In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their stellar spectrum, spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a Prism (optics), prism or diffraction grati ...

of K5 Iab, indicating that it is a

supergiant Supergiants are among the most massive and most luminous stars. Supergiant stars occupy the top region of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram with absolute visual magnitudes between about −3 and −8. The temperature range of supergiant stars spa ...

star. Its

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 3,840 K lies in the range for K-type stars, giving it an orange hue. This star has over seven times more than the

mass of the Sun The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass ...

and the outer envelope has expanded to about 184 times the Sun's radius. It is radiating 6,600 times the

luminosity of the Sun 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 s ...

. 32 Cygni B, the companion star, is three times as luminous as the Sun and four times as massive. It has a much higher effective temperature of 16,200 K and is radiating over 300 times the Sun's luminosity. This star has the blue-white hue of a B7 star

main sequence In astronomy, the main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Her ...

star.

The two stars form an

eclipsing binary A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in wh ...

system (

variable star designation In astronomy, a variable star designation is a unique identifier given to variable stars. It uses a variation on the Bayer designation format, with an identifying label (as described below) preceding the Latin genitive of the name of the constell ...

: V1488 Cyg) similar to

Algol ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...

. The

orbital plane The orbital plane of a revolving body is the geometric plane in which its orbit lies. Three non-collinear points in space suffice to determine an orbital plane. A common example would be the positions of the centers of a massive body (host) an ...

of the two stars is nearly aligned with the line of sight from the Earth, so that the supergiant star eclipses the secondary component once per orbit. During an eclipse,

emission line A spectral line is a dark or bright line in an otherwise uniform and continuous spectrum, resulting from emission or absorption of light in a narrow frequency range, compared with the nearby frequencies. Spectral lines are often used to iden ...

s can be seen in the

spectrum A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors i ...

of this system. These originate in the

stellar wind A stellar wind is a flow of gas ejected from the upper atmosphere of a star. It is distinguished from the bipolar outflows characteristic of young stars by being less collimated, although stellar winds are not generally spherically symmetric. D ...

escaping from the supergiant star. In a volume around the B star, this wind becomes

ion An ion () is an atom or molecule with a net electrical charge. The charge of an electron is considered to be negative by convention and this charge is equal and opposite to the charge of a proton, which is considered to be positive by conven ...

ized, resulting in a circumstellar

H II region An H II region or HII region is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized. It is typically in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place, with a size ranging from one to hundreds ...

. The supergiant star is losing mass at the rate of times the

per year, or the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 77 million years. The

Washington Double Star Catalog The Washington Double Star Catalog, or WDS, is a catalog of double stars, maintained at the United States Naval Observatory. The catalog contains positions, magnitudes, proper motions and spectral types and has entries for (as of June 2017) 141,7 ...

and

Catalog of Components of Double and Multiple Stars The Catalog of Components of Double and Multiple Stars, or CCDM, is an astrometric star catalogue of double and multiple stars. It was made by Jean Dommanget and Omer Nys at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in order to provide an input catalogu ...

both list a visual companion 208" distant. This star is the 8th magnitude A class HD 192933.

References

External links

* http://jumk.de/astronomie/special-stars/32-cygni.shtml {{Stars of Cygnus Cygnus (constellation) Cygni, Omicron2 Cygni, 32 192909 Algol variables K-type supergiants B-type main-sequence stars Bright Star Catalogue objects 099848 BD+47 3059 Cygni, V1488