Star profile
57 Cygni
Hot blue starWhat is 57 Cygni
57 Cygni hides inside the Swan some 525 light-years away, yet it is not one star but two: a near-twin pair of B5 blue suns swinging through an orbit shorter than three days. So close, so fast that only the splitting of their spectral lines gives them away. The light we read as a single point is in truth the combined pulse of a duet.
Where it is and when to see it
57 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 August, when it culminates around midnight.
- From London it never sets and culminates about 83° up.
- From New York it culminates about 86° above the horizon.
- From Sydney it culminates about 12° above the horizon.
It can be seen from anywhere north of 46° S.
It ranks no. 34 in brightness among the 137 stars of Cygnus in our catalogue. To find it, start from Deneb, the brightest: it lies about 2° away (a fist at arm's length covers about 10°).
The light you see today left it about 530 years ago.
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Astronomical data for 57 Cygni
- Constellation
- Cygnus
- Apparent magnitude
- 4.80
- Distance
- 525.3 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 313.311° · Dec 44.387°
- Catalogue
- HIP 103089 · HD 199081
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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
- 59 Cygni4.74
- 8 Cygni4.74
- 34 Cygni4.77
- 30 Cygni4.80
- 55 Cygni4.81