Star profile
Tau Cancri
What is Tau Cancri
Tau Cancri is a yellow giant of type G burning some 274 light-years away, in the body of the zodiacal Crab. A few degrees from it pulses the Beehive, M44 —the open cluster the ancients described as a little cloud and which Galileo, turning his telescope upon it in 1609, first resolved into dozens of individual lights—. Tau shares this celestial neighbourhood, though not that stellar family.
Where it is and when to see it
Tau 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 Tau Cancri
- Constellation
- Cancer
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.42
- Distance
- 273.7 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 137.000° · Dec 29.654°
- Catalogue
- HIP 44818 · HD 78235
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
- Eta Cancri5.33
- Pi 2 Cancri5.36
- 57 Cancri5.40
- 60 Cancri5.44
- Sigma 2 Cancri5.44