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Star profile

Cor Caroli

Alpha 2 Canum Venaticorum · Canes Venatici

Variable star
3D likeness based on its real data · class A · ~8,500 K

What is Cor Caroli

Cor Caroli, «Charles's Heart», was named in the seventeenth century in honour of King Charles I of England, the tradition holding that it shone unusually brightly the night his son made his triumphant return to London. It is a white A-type star 115 light-years away, prototype of a class of magnetic variables: its field is thousands of times stronger than the Sun's and drags exotic chemical elements to its surface. It glows alone in Canes Venatici, beneath the tail of the Great Bear.

Where it is and when to see it

Cor Caroli lies in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is March: 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.

Find it on the sky map

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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

If you don't have an account yet, we'll ask for an email to confirm it's you: we send you a link and that's it, no password.

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 Cor Caroli

Constellation
Canes Venatici
Apparent magnitude
2.89
Distance
114.8 light years
Coordinates (J2000)
RA 194.007° · Dec 38.318°
Catalogue
HIP 63125 · HD 112413

A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.

Other stars in Canes Venatici

Canes Venatici has 33 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.

See all 33 stars in Canes Venatici