Star profile
Iota Lupi
Hot blue starWhat is Iota Lupi
Iota Lupi burns blue some 338 light-years away, deep in the body of the southern Wolf. Its outer layers reach close to 20,000 degrees, a temperature so brutal that the human eye barely registers the turquoise tint of its glow. Like many hot B-type stars, it lives in a hurry: a few hundred million years will exhaust the fuel that a yellow sun rations across ten thousand.
Where it is and when to see it
Iota Lupi lies in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is May, when it culminates around midnight.
- From London it never rises above the horizon.
- From New York it culminates about 3° above the horizon.
- From Sydney it culminates about 78° above the horizon.
It can be seen from anywhere south of 44° N.
It ranks no. 8 in brightness among the 74 stars of Lupus in our catalogue. To find it, start from Alpha Lupi, the brightest: it lies about 4° away (a fist at arm's length covers about 10°).
The light you see today left it about 340 years ago.
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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 Iota Lupi
- Constellation
- Lupus
- Apparent magnitude
- 3.55
- Distance
- 338.0 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 214.851° · Dec -46.058°
- Catalogue
- HIP 69996 · HD 125238
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Other stars in Lupus
Lupus has 74 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- Alpha Lupi2.30
- Beta Lupi2.68
- Gamma Lupi2.80
- Epsilon Lupi3.37
- Zeta Lupi3.41
- Eta Lupi3.42
- Phi 1 Lupi3.57
- Kappa 1 Lupi3.88