Star profile
51 Cygni
Hot blue starWhat is 51 Cygni
51 Cygni resides within the long summer Swan, some 1,274 light-years away. It is a blue B-type star —cosmically young, yet already forging heavier elements in its core. Its light parted from the photosphere around the 8th century and has travelled all that time parallel to the thousands of suns in the Orion arm, never striking one: a solitude only space knows how to tell.
Where it is and when to see it
51 Cygni lies in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is September, when it culminates around midnight.
- From London it never sets and culminates about 89° up.
- From New York it never sets and culminates about 80° up.
- From Sydney it culminates about 6° above the horizon.
It can be seen from anywhere north of 40° S.
It ranks no. 71 in brightness among the 137 stars of Cygnus in our catalogue. To find it, start from Deneb, the brightest: it lies about 5° away (a fist at arm's length covers about 10°).
The light you see today left it about 1,300 years ago.
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Astronomical data for 51 Cygni
- Constellation
- Cygnus
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.41
- Distance
- 1274.2 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 310.553° · Dec 50.340°
- Catalogue
- HIP 102177 · HD 197511
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Other stars in Cygnus
Cygnus has 137 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- DenebAlpha Cygni1.25
- SadrGamma Cygni2.23
- AljanahEpsilon Cygni2.48
- 60 Cygni5.38
- 27 Cygni5.38
- 9 Cygni5.39
- 14 Cygni5.41
- Omega 2 Cygni5.44