One
of the least known stars in the sky, Avior is the brightest star of the
constellation Carina The Keel. It is designated "Epsilon" Carinae
because it was formerly one of stars in the vast former constellation of
Argo.
Avior can only be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. It was unknown to Classical astronomers and was oddly overlooked during the Age of Discovery. It did not receive its name until World War II, when military action in the South Pacific made naming the star critical. It was named primarily because it is part of the asterism of the "False Cross" which resembles and is often mistaken for the Southern Cross (Crux); giving it a name helped distinguish the "False Cross" from the true "Southern Cross." This was an aid to celestial navigators in the South Pacific. The name "Avior" has no meaning; it just sounded good to the British Royal Astronomers who named it, and it suggested flight.
Avior is a First Magnitude star and a binary. The two stars orbit each other. The larger partner of the pair is a red-orange giant; the smaller is a hot indigo-colored dwarf star that has never been seen with the naked eye, only with instrumentation. Together, they are 6000 times the brightness of our Sun. They lie about 660 light years away. The red-orange star pours infrared radiation into the heavens at a prodigious rate; the dark blue star pours ultraviolet radiation into the sky at an even greater rate. Their shared space is a place where nothing earthlike could survive, even in passing.
The red-orange giant is only about 35 million years old, indicating that not very long ago, during its Main Sequence, it burned with an intensity greater than its virtually invisible indigo-colored partner. The age of the indigo star is unknown.
It is guessed that the indigo star may have seven times the sun's mass. It is burning at 37,000 degrees F. , much hotter than its partner's 5800 degrees. Beta Avior's color, indigo, is rare, and makes the Avior system one ripe for study; even now, little is known of Avior, the star system placed placed 22nd in the Nautical Almanac so that navigators could remember to forget about it.
Avior can only be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. It was unknown to Classical astronomers and was oddly overlooked during the Age of Discovery. It did not receive its name until World War II, when military action in the South Pacific made naming the star critical. It was named primarily because it is part of the asterism of the "False Cross" which resembles and is often mistaken for the Southern Cross (Crux); giving it a name helped distinguish the "False Cross" from the true "Southern Cross." This was an aid to celestial navigators in the South Pacific. The name "Avior" has no meaning; it just sounded good to the British Royal Astronomers who named it, and it suggested flight.
Avior is a First Magnitude star and a binary. The two stars orbit each other. The larger partner of the pair is a red-orange giant; the smaller is a hot indigo-colored dwarf star that has never been seen with the naked eye, only with instrumentation. Together, they are 6000 times the brightness of our Sun. They lie about 660 light years away. The red-orange star pours infrared radiation into the heavens at a prodigious rate; the dark blue star pours ultraviolet radiation into the sky at an even greater rate. Their shared space is a place where nothing earthlike could survive, even in passing.
The red-orange giant is only about 35 million years old, indicating that not very long ago, during its Main Sequence, it burned with an intensity greater than its virtually invisible indigo-colored partner. The age of the indigo star is unknown.
It is guessed that the indigo star may have seven times the sun's mass. It is burning at 37,000 degrees F. , much hotter than its partner's 5800 degrees. Beta Avior's color, indigo, is rare, and makes the Avior system one ripe for study; even now, little is known of Avior, the star system placed placed 22nd in the Nautical Almanac so that navigators could remember to forget about it.
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