Eta Sculptoris, a red giant star in Sculptor
Eta Sculptoris is a red giant star in the constellation Sculptor. At 553 light years away, it shines at an apparent visual magnitude of 4.81.
Eta Sculptoris (HIP 2210)
Eta Sculptoris is a red giant star in the constellation Sculptor. At 553 light years away, it shines at an apparent visual magnitude of 4.81. It is moving through the Galaxy at a speed of 44.5 km/s relative to the Sun.
Sky position: RA 0h 27.9m, Dec -33° 0.4'
Common designations: Eta Sculptoris, HR 105, HD 2429, HIP 2210, Gaia DR3 2315550051916217856
Eta Sculptoris has the spectral type M2/3III. M-type stars are cool red stars below about 3,900 K whose spectra are dominated by titanium oxide molecular bands. Red dwarfs, red giants and red supergiants all fall in this class. 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 Eta Sculptoris in the sky
Eta Sculptoris lies in Sculptor. With a declination of -33° 0.4', it is visible from the entire Southern Hemisphere and from the Northern Hemisphere up to about latitude 57° N. Observers poleward of latitude 57° S see it as circumpolar: it never sets. It is bright enough to see with the naked eye under dark skies. It is highest in the sky at local midnight around October, which makes the weeks around that month the best time to observe it.
Tabulated data for Eta Sculptoris
Astrometry and spectroscopy
| Right Ascension (J2000) | 6.98207426° (0h 27.9m) |
| Declination (J2000) | -33.00716597° (-33° 0.4') |
| Galactic Longitude | 342.36071759° |
| Galactic Latitude | -82.22935656° |
| Proper motion RA | -20.07 mas/yr |
| Proper motion Dec | -49.42 mas/yr |
| Parallax | 5.90 ± 0.18 mas |
| Spectral Type | M2/3III |
| Radial Velocity | 12.10 km/s |
Photometry
| Band | Magnitude | Abs. Mag. |
|---|---|---|
| U | 8.26 | 2.11 |
| B | 6.45 | 0.30 |
| V | 4.81 | -1.34 |
| R | 3.22 | -2.93 |
| I | 1.84 | -4.31 |
| J | 1.24 | -4.91 |
| H | 0.29 | -5.86 |
| K | 0.08 | -6.07 |
Colour index B-V: +1.64
Derivations
- Heliocentric distance: 169.54 pc (553 light years) (3.1% margin of error)
- Absolute visual magnitude: -1.34
- Transverse velocity: 42.9 km/s
- Space velocity relative to the Sun: 44.5 km/s
- Galactic position (X, Y, Z): 21.8 pc, -6.9 pc, -168.0 pc
- Galactic velocity (U, V, W): 35.0 km/s, -26.7 km/s, -6.6 km/s
Data: Extended Hipparcos Compilation (XHIP) and SIMBAD.