16 Persei, a yellow-white giant star in Perseus
16 Persei is a yellow-white giant star in the constellation Perseus. It lies about 126 light years away.
16 Persei (HIP 13254)
16 Persei is a yellow-white giant star in the constellation Perseus. It lies about 126 light years away. It is moving through the Galaxy at a speed of 43.8 km/s relative to the Sun.
Sky position: RA 2h 50.6m, Dec +38° 19.1'
Common designations: 16 Persei, HR 840, HD 17584, Gaia DR3 143293685388561664, HIP 13254
16 Persei has the spectral type F2III. F-type stars are yellow-white stars of about 6,000 to 7,500 K, slightly hotter and more massive than the Sun. Their hydrogen lines are weaker than in A stars and metal lines become prominent. Its luminosity class III marks it as a giant: an evolved star that has left the main sequence and swollen to many times its original size.
How to find 16 Persei in the sky
16 Persei lies in Perseus. With a declination of +38° 19.1', it is visible from the entire Northern Hemisphere and from the Southern Hemisphere down to about latitude 52° S. Observers poleward of latitude 52° N see it as circumpolar: it never sets. It is highest in the sky at local midnight around November, which makes the weeks around that month the best time to observe it.
Tabulated data for 16 Persei
Astrometry and spectroscopy
| Right Ascension (J2000) | 42.64608194° (2h 50.6m) |
| Declination (J2000) | 38.31864289° (+38° 19.1') |
| Galactic Longitude | 147.25431649° |
| Galactic Latitude | -18.86159619° |
| Proper motion RA | 195.45 mas/yr |
| Proper motion Dec | -109.40 mas/yr |
| Parallax | 25.84 ± 0.22 mas |
| Spectral Type | F2III |
| Radial Velocity | 15.17 km/s |
Photometry
| Band | Magnitude | Abs. Mag. |
|---|---|---|
| B | 4.57 | 1.63 |
| R | 4.00 | 1.06 |
| J | 3.46 | 0.53 |
| H | 3.35 | 0.41 |
| K | 3.24 | 0.30 |
Derivations
- Heliocentric distance: 38.69 pc (126 light years) (0.9% margin of error)
- Transverse velocity: 41.1 km/s
- Space velocity relative to the Sun: 43.8 km/s
- Galactic position (X, Y, Z): -30.8 pc, 19.8 pc, -12.5 pc
- Galactic velocity (U, V, W): -34.0 km/s, -27.0 km/s, -5.8 km/s
Data: Extended Hipparcos Compilation (XHIP) and SIMBAD.