Star profile
Xi Cassiopeiae
Hot blue starWhat is Xi Cassiopeiae
ξ Cassiopeiae appears among the five stars that form Cassiopeia's W, more than 1,400 light-years away. It is a long-period spectroscopic binary —940 days— in which the visible star is a young blue main-sequence object of ten solar masses, barely 19 million years old. It spins at 139 km/s, all but forced to do so by its hot youth.
Where it is and when to see it
Xi Cassiopeiae 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 Cassiopeiae
- Constellation
- Cassiopeia
- Apparent magnitude
- 4.80
- Distance
- 1430.7 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 10.516° · Dec 50.513°
- Catalogue
- HIP 3300 · HD 3901
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Cassiopeia
Cassiopeia has 93 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- CihGamma Cassiopeiae2.15
- SchedarAlpha Cassiopeiae2.24
- CaphBeta Cassiopeiae2.28
- Chi Cassiopeiae4.68
- Psi Cassiopeiae4.72
- Lambda Cassiopeiae4.74
- HIP 41514.80
- Upsilon 1 Cassiopeiae4.83