Eta
Ophiuchi, better known as Sabik, is the 44th star in the Nautical
Almanac. Despite it's "Eta" designation it is the second brightest star
in the constellation Ophiuchus The Snake Handler.
Sabik's name means "Precedent" or "Ancestor" and comes from the Arabic word As-Sabaq. Exactly why it got this name is not clear. It is also called "The Snake Handler's Knee" even though it is sometimes considered part of the constellation Serpens The Serpent, the snake that Ophiuchus is holding.
On the whole, Sabik's region of the sky is confusing, for the Ecliptic passes through Ophiuchus, properly making it one of the Zodiacal constellations, the thirteenth, though it is not (it was once, in antiquity) and other constellations crowd around both Serpens and Ophiuchus.
As seen with the naked eye Sabik is a dim Second Magnitude star, and in a simple optical telescope it resolves itself into a binary of two Magnitude Three stars in close proximity. More powerful telescopes have found at least three more stars in the Sabik Star System, though little is known of them.
The two main stars orbit each other once every 88 years in a highly eccentric nearly boat-shaped orbit. At their closest they are as far apart as the Sun and Mars. At their furthest they are as far apart as the Sun and Pluto. Their gravitational interaction in this orbit makes any planetary systems unlikely.
Sabik A is brighter than Sabik B, but not exceptionally so. A is 35 times as luminous as the Sun, while B is just 21 times as bright. Sabik A has three times the mass of our Sun. Sabik B has 3.5 times the mass. A has a radius of two-and-half times that of the Sun, B just twice. Both burn at just over 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Sabik system is 88 light years away from Earth. The age of the system is an unanswered question, though both Sabik A and Sabik B are Main Sequence blue stars.
One curiosity about the Sabik system is that Sabik is the North Pole Star of Uranus.
Sabik's name means "Precedent" or "Ancestor" and comes from the Arabic word As-Sabaq. Exactly why it got this name is not clear. It is also called "The Snake Handler's Knee" even though it is sometimes considered part of the constellation Serpens The Serpent, the snake that Ophiuchus is holding.
On the whole, Sabik's region of the sky is confusing, for the Ecliptic passes through Ophiuchus, properly making it one of the Zodiacal constellations, the thirteenth, though it is not (it was once, in antiquity) and other constellations crowd around both Serpens and Ophiuchus.
As seen with the naked eye Sabik is a dim Second Magnitude star, and in a simple optical telescope it resolves itself into a binary of two Magnitude Three stars in close proximity. More powerful telescopes have found at least three more stars in the Sabik Star System, though little is known of them.
The two main stars orbit each other once every 88 years in a highly eccentric nearly boat-shaped orbit. At their closest they are as far apart as the Sun and Mars. At their furthest they are as far apart as the Sun and Pluto. Their gravitational interaction in this orbit makes any planetary systems unlikely.
Sabik A is brighter than Sabik B, but not exceptionally so. A is 35 times as luminous as the Sun, while B is just 21 times as bright. Sabik A has three times the mass of our Sun. Sabik B has 3.5 times the mass. A has a radius of two-and-half times that of the Sun, B just twice. Both burn at just over 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Sabik system is 88 light years away from Earth. The age of the system is an unanswered question, though both Sabik A and Sabik B are Main Sequence blue stars.
One curiosity about the Sabik system is that Sabik is the North Pole Star of Uranus.
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