Epsilon Cassiopeiae or ε Cassiopeiae, officially named Segin (), is a single

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 northern constellation of Cassiopeia. 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 3.4, this is one of the

brightest stars This is a list of stars arranged by their apparent magnitude – their brightness as observed from Earth. It includes all stars brighter than magnitude +2.50 in visible light, measured using a ''V''-band filter in the UBV photometric system. Sta ...

in the constellation. The distance to this star has been determined directly using

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, yielding a value of around 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 rad ...

. It is drifting closer with a

radial velocity The radial velocity or line-of-sight velocity, also known as radial speed or range rate, of a target with respect to an observer is the rate of change of the distance or range between the two points. It is equivalent to the vector projection ...

of −8 km/s.

Nomenclature

''ε Cassiopeiae'', Latinised to ''Epsilon Cassiopeiae'', is the star's Bayer catalog designation. The star bore the traditional name ''Segin'', which probably originates from an erroneous transcription of ''Seginus'', the traditional name for

Gamma Boötis Gamma Boötis, Latinised from γ Boötis, is a binary star system in the northern constellation of Boötes the herdsman, forming the left shoulder of this asterism. The primary component has the proper name Seginus , the traditional ...

, which itself is of uncertain origin. Different sources report varying pronunciations, with SEG-in the most common but the variants SAY-gin and seg-EEN also appearing. In 2016, the IAU organized a

Working Group on Star Names The International Astronomical Union (IAU) established a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) in May 2016 to catalog and standardize List of proper names of stars, proper names for stars for the international astronomical community. It operates under ...

(WGSN) to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN approved the name ''Segin'' for this star on 5 September 2017 and it is now so included in the List of IAU-approved Star Names. While some published reports incorrectly claim that this star was designated by NASA as ''Navi'' ('Ivan', backwards), in honor of astronaut Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom, one of the three astronauts who died in the

Apollo 1 Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was intended to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo program, the American undertaking to land the first man on the Moon. It was planned to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbita ...

accident, the actual star so designated is

Gamma Cassiopeiae Gamma Cassiopeiae, Latinized from γ Cassiopeiae, is a bright star at the center of the distinctive "W" asterism in the northern circumpolar constellation of Cassiopeia. Although it is a fairly bright star with an apparent visual mag ...

in the center of the constellation. In Chinese, (), meaning '' Flying Corridor'', refers to an asterism consisting of Epsilon Cassiopeiae, Iota Cassiopeiae, Delta Cassiopeiae, Theta Cassiopeiae,

Nu Cassiopeiae Nu Cassiopeiae, Latinized from ν Cassiopeiae, is a solitary star in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia. With an apparent visual magnitude of +4.89, it is a faint star but visible to the naked eye. Based upon an annual parallax ...

and Omicron Cassiopeiae. Consequently, the

Chinese name Chinese names or Chinese personal names are names used by individuals from Greater China and other parts of the Chinese-speaking world throughout East and Southeast Asia (ESEA). In addition, many names used in Japan, Korea and Vietnam are oft ...

for Epsilon Cassiopeiae itself is (, en, the Second Star of Flying Corridor.)

Properties

Epsilon Cassiopeiae has 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, indicating that it is a

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 fusing hydrogen in its core. Cote ''et al.'' (2003) indicate that it displays the spectral properties of a

Be star Be stars are a heterogeneous set of stars with B spectral types and emission lines. A narrower definition, sometimes referred to as ''classical Be stars'', is a non-supergiant B star whose spectrum has, or had at some time, one or more Balmer e ...

, even though it is not categorized as such. The presence of

emission lines 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 ident ...

in the spectrum indicates the presence of a circumstellar shell of gas that has been thrown off by the star. Epsilon Cassiopeiae has nine times the mass and six times the radius of the Sun. It is radiating 3,000 times the luminosity of the Sun from its

photosphere The photosphere is a star's outer shell from which light is radiated. The term itself is derived from Ancient Greek roots, φῶς, φωτός/''phos, photos'' meaning "light" and σφαῖρα/''sphaira'' meaning "sphere", in reference to it ...

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 , giving it the blue-white hue of a B-type star. Observation during the

Hipparcos ''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions of celestial obj ...

mission suggest that the star may undergo weak periodic variability. The amplitude of this variation is 0.0025 in magnitude with a frequency of 11.17797 times per day, or one cycle every 2.15 hours. The

signal-to-noise ratio Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. SNR is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power, often expressed in d ...

for this measured variation is 4.978. Hipparcos measurements of the space velocity components for this star suggest that it is a member of the Cas-Tau group of co-moving stars, with a 93% likelihood. This group may be kinematically associated with the alpha Persei Cluster, indicating that the Cas-Tau group, including Epsilon Cassiopeiae, may have been separated from the cluster through tidal interactions.

References

External links

* {{Stars of Cassiopeia B-type main-sequence stars Be stars Suspected variables Cassiopeia (constellation) Cassiopeiae, Epsilon Durchmusterung objects Cassiopeiae, 45 011415 008886 0542 Segin