Star profile
Xi 1 Ceti
What is Xi 1 Ceti
ξ¹ Ceti dwells in the sea-monster Cetus, on the celestial equator. It is a binary system 383 light-years away whose true nature was revealed in 1901 by William Wallace Campbell with the spectrograph at Lick Observatory. The two stars orbit each other in a near-perfect circle every 4.5 years, separated by less than four astronomical units. The primary is a yellow giant with a touch of barium in its atmosphere.
Where it is and when to see it
Xi 1 Ceti lies in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is October: the Sun sits at the opposite point of the sky and the star culminates around midnight. How high it climbs above the horizon depends on the latitude you watch from.
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The signature wall
Stelvia's sky works like a signature wall: anyone can leave their name and a message on a real star, and that signature goes up on the map for everyone to read. Signing is free.
A signature without a lock can be replaced by someone else's. The lock makes the signature permanent and lets you choose a symbolic name for the star, always shown next to the star's catalogue identifier. How the lock works
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A public signature from a real person. The chosen name is a symbolic denomination within Stelvia, with no official standing or IAU recognition: the sky is not for sale and belongs to no one.
Astronomical data for Xi 1 Ceti
- Constellation
- Cetus
- Apparent magnitude
- 4.36
- Distance
- 383.3 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 33.250° · Dec 8.847°
- Catalogue
- HIP 10324 · HD 13611
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Cetus
Cetus has 111 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- DiphdaBeta Ceti2.04
- MenkarAlpha Ceti2.54
- Eta Ceti3.46
- Pi Ceti4.24
- Mu Ceti4.27
- Xi 2 Ceti4.30
- 7 Ceti4.44
- 2 Ceti4.55