HD 1461 / HR 72 |
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NASA
HD 1461 is a yellow-orange star
like our Sun, Sol.
(See a 2MASS
Survey
image
of HD 1461 from
the
NASA Star
and Exoplanet
Database.)
System Summary
HD 1461 is located about 76.4 light-years from Sol. It lies in the east central part (0:18:41.9-08:3:10.8, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Cetus, the Sea Monster -- northeast of Eta and Beta Ceti (Deneb Kaitos or Diphda); east of Iota Ceti; west of Theta and Zeta Ceti (Baten Kaitos); , as well as Azha (Eta Eridani); and northwest of Tau and Nu Ceti; southwest of Omicron (Mira), Gamma (Kaffaljidhma, and Alpha (Menkar) Ceti. On December 14, 2009, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of one super-Earth and possibly two additional planets (roughly Neptune- and Saturn-class) with at least 7.6, 27.9, and 87.1 Earth-masses (U.C. Santa Cruz news release; Keck press release; and Rivera et al, 2009 -- more below). (See an animation of the planetary orbits, dust disk, and potentially habitable zone around HD 1461, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.)
Steven Vogt,
UCSC,
Larger map.
HD 1461
is located
northeast of
the bright
orange giant
Deneb
Kaitos,
(Beta Ceti) in
Constellation
Cetus
(more).
Today, some astronomers now refer to this star as HD 1461, as it is listed in the Henry Draper (1837-82) Catalogue with extension (HDE), a massive photographic stellar spectrum survey carried out by Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) and Edward Charles Pickering (1846-1919) from 1911 to 1915 under the sponsorship of a memorial fund created by Henry's wife, Anna Mary Palmer. As a relatively bright star in Earth's night sky, the star is also catalogued as Harvard Revised (HR) 72, a numbering system derived from the 1908 Revised Harvard Photometry catalogue of stars visible to many Humans with the naked eye which has been revised and expanded through its successor, the Yale Bright Star Catalogue through the hard work of the late E. Dorrit Hoffleit (1907 - 2007) and others. The star was also designated as BD-08 38 in a catalogue that was originally published in 1863 by Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander (1799-1875) on the position and brightness of 324,198 stars between +90° and -2° declination that were measured over 11 years from Bonn, Germany with his assistants Eduard Schönfeld (1828-1891) and Aldalbert Krüger (1832-1896), which became famous as the Bonner Durchmusterung ("Bonn Survey") and is typically abbreviated as BD.
The Star
HD 1461 is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf of spectral and luminosity type G0 V (Cenarro et al, 2007), but it has been classed as orange as G5 and as bright as a subgiant. The star has about 1.02 to 1.08 percent of Sol's mass (95 percent using the isochrone mass estimate of Valenti and Fischer, 2005; Takeda et al, 2007; Sousa et al, 2008; and NASA Star and Exoplanet Database, based on David F. Gray, 1992), 1.1 times of its diameter (Valenti and Fischer, 2005; and Takeda et al, 2007), and around 1.2 times of its theoretical bolometric luminosity (Sousa et al, 2008; Valenti and Fischer, 2005; NASA Star and Exoplanet Database, based on Kenneth R. Lang, 1980). The star may be 1.5 to 1.6 times as enriched as Sol with elements heavier than hydrogen ("metallicity"), based on its abundance of iron (Sousa et al, 2008; Cenarro et al, 2007; Valenti and Fischer, 2005; and NASA Star and Exoplanet Database. It appears to be 4.2 to 7.1 billion years in age (Takeda et al, 2007; Valenti and Fischer, 2005; and (Wright et al, 2004). HD 1461 appears to be relatively inactive (Rivera et al, 2009). The star has a rotational period of 29 days (Wright et al, 2004). Useful star catalogue numbers for the star include: HR 72, Gl 16.1, Hip 1499, HD 1461, BD-08 38, SAO 128690, GJ 9009, Wo 9009, LTT 149, and GC 378.
JPL,
NASA
Larger image.
While planet "b" could be rocky or
ice-rich like Neptune, unconfirmed
planetary candidates "c" amd "d"
are probably gas giants.
Closest Neighbors
The following star systems are located within 10 light-years, plus more bright stars within 10 to 20 ly, of HD 1461.
| Star System | Spectra & Luminosity | Distance (light-years) |
| BD-09 54 | K2 V | 1.6 |
| BD-06 15 | M2 V | 7.9 |
| LP 645-46 | G-K V | 7.9 |
| BD-10 47 | K7 V | 9.0 |
| * plus bright stars * | . . . | |
| 13 Ceti 4? | F6-8 V M V G1 V ? | 11 |
| BD-08 117 AB | G0 V M1 V | 11 |
| BE Ceti | G2-3 V | 11 |
| BD-14 42 | G2 V | 12 |
| BD-05 138 | G0 V | 12 |
| BD-15 7 | G2-3 V | 17 |
| 6 Ceti | F5-7 V | 17 |
| BD-05 124 | G5 V | 19 |
| 37 Ceti AB | F5 V K1 V | 19 |
| BD-20 6684 | G8 V | 20 |
| HR 8931 | F8 V | 20 |
Other Information
Up-to-date technical summaries on these stars can be found at: Jean Schneider's Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia; the Astronomiches Rechen-Institut at Heidelberg's ARICNS, the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database, and SIMBAD. Additional information may be available at Roger Wilcox's Internet Stellar Database.
In Greek mythology, Cetus is supposed to be the sea monster that would have devoured the "chained maiden," Andromeda, if Perseus had not come to the rescue. For more information on stars and other objects in Constellation Cetus, go to Christine Kronberg's Cetus. For an illustration, see David Haworth's Cetus.
For more information about stars including spectral and luminosity class codes, go to ChView's webpage on The Stars of the Milky Way.
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