DX Cancri

Home | Stars | Habitability | Life |

NASA -- larger image

DX Cancri is a dim red dwarf star, like Gliese
623 A (M2.5V) and B (M5.8Ve) at lower right.
(See a Digitized Sky Survey field image around
DX Cancri at the Nearby Stars Database.)

System Summary

This star is located only about 11.8 light-years (ly) from our Sun, Sol, just north of the center (08:29:48+26:46.7, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Cancer, the Crab -- northwest of the famous open star cluster M 44 (also known as the Beehive Cluster and Praesepe, Latin for "Manger") and Ascellus Australis (Delta Cancri). However, DX Cancri is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. The star may have been discovered by Willem Jacob Luyten (1899-1994), who found the proper motions of over 520,000 stars despite the loss of sight in one eye since 1925 by building an automated photographic plate scanner and measuring machine.

Arnold O. Benz, Institute of Astronomy, ETH Zurich

High resolution and jumbo images (Benz et al, 1998).

DX Cancri is a flare star, like UV Ceti shown flaring
at left. UV Ceti is an extreme example of a flare star
that can boost its brightness by five times in less
than a minute, then fall somewhat slower back down to
normal luminosity within two or three minutes before
flaring suddenly again after several hours.

The Star

This cool and dim, main sequence red dwarf (M6.5 Ve) has only 8.7 percent of Sol's mass (RECONS), 11 percent of its diameter (Claud H. Lacy, 1977, page 481), and about 12/1,000,000th of its brightness. According to SIMBAD, DX Cancri is a flare star. Some alternative names and useful star catalogue numbers are: GJ 1111, G 51-15, and LHS 248.

Hunt for Substellar Companions

The distance from DX Cancri where an Earth-type planet would be comfortable with liquid water is less than 0.04 AU would result in a "year" that last less than 10 hours. At that distance, the rotation of the planet would probably be tidally locked with the star so that one side would have perpetual daylight while the other would be in eternal darkness. Moreover, DX Cancri's light is so red that Earth-type plants may not be able to photosynthesize very well.

Closest Neighbors

The following star systems are located within 10 ly of DX Cancri.

Star System	Spectra & Luminosity	Distance (light-years)
Procyon 2	F5 V-IV DA-F/VII	5.0
LTT 12352	M3.5 V	5.1
Luyten's Star	M3.5-5 V	5.5
GJ 1116 AB	M5.5 V M5.5 V	5.7
Lalande 21185	M2.1 Ve	6.7
AD Leonis	M3 Ve	7.3
Wolf 359	M5.8 Ve	7.7
Groombridge 1618	K5-7 Ve	8.2
Wolf 294	M3 V	8.2
Ross 614 AB	M4.5 Ve ?	9.1
BD+44 2051 A WX Ursae Majoris (B)	M1 Ve M5.5 Ve	9.2
Sirius 2	A0-1 Vm DA2-5/VII	6.5

Other Information

Up-to-date technical summaries on this star can be found at: the Astronomiches Rechen-Institut at Heidelberg's ARICNS, the Nearby Stars Database, and the Research Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS) list of the 100 Nearest Star Systems. Additional information may be available at Roger Wilcox's Internet Stellar Database.

This constellation represents the Crab which is attacking Hercules during his fight with the water snake, Hydra. For more information on the stars and other objects in the constellation and an illustration, go to Christine Kronberg's Cancer. For another illustration, see David Haworth's Cancer.

For more information about stars including spectral and luminosity class codes, go to ChView's webpage on The Stars of the Milky Way.