Star
Alnair
Blue-white star · B7IV
α Gruis · Grus
Shown in its true colour — like most stars, it is too far away to photograph as more than a point of light.
Alpha Gruis is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Grus. It is officially named Alnair; Alpha Gruis is the star's Bayer designation, which is Latinized from α Gruis and abbreviated α Gru. With a magnitude of 1.74, it is one of the brightest stars in the sky and one of the fifty-eight stars selected for celestial navigation. Alpha Gruis is a single, B-type main-sequence star located at a distance of 31 pc.
Description from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
In your sky
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Key facts
Distance
~101 light-years
Apparent mag.
+1.73
Spectral type
B7IV
Luminosity
170 × Sun
Absolute mag.
−0.72
Catalogue
HIP 109268
Spectral type
B7IV
True colour from its B–V index (-0.07): a surface around 11100 K.
Did you know
- Alnair is also known as α Gruis.
- Its spectral type B7IV marks it as a blue-white star.
- It lies in the constellation Grus.
