Star profile
3 Cancri
What is 3 Cancri
3 Cancri glows orange within the modest constellation of the Crab, the faint zodiacal outline that hosts the Beehive Cluster. It is a K-type giant, far cooler and more swollen than the Sun, with the coppery light typical of evolved stars. It is distant —nearly 794 light-years— so the light tracing it tonight departed in the thirteenth century, while Marco Polo was still travelling the silk roads toward Cathay.
Where it is and when to see it
3 Cancri lies in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is January: 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 3 Cancri
- Constellation
- Cancer
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.60
- Distance
- 793.7 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 120.197° · Dec 17.309°
- Catalogue
- HIP 39177 · HD 65759
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Cancer
Cancer has 49 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- TarfBeta Cancri3.53
- Asellus AustralisDelta Cancri3.94
- Iota Cancri4.03
- Nu Cancri5.45
- 27 Cancri5.56
- Phi 1 Cancri5.58
- 15 Cancri5.62
- 45 Cancri5.62