Mu Muscae, an orange giant star in Musca
Mu Muscae is an orange giant star in the constellation Musca. At 476 light years away, it shines at an apparent visual magnitude of 4.73.
Mu Muscae (HIP 57581)
Mu Muscae is an orange giant star in the constellation Musca. At 476 light years away, it shines at an apparent visual magnitude of 4.73. It is moving through the Galaxy at a speed of 44.2 km/s relative to the Sun.
Sky position: RA 11h 48.2m, Dec -66° 48.9'
Common designations: Mu Muscae, HR 4530, HD 102584, HIP 57581, Gaia DR3 5236290747119515008
Mu Muscae has the spectral type K4III. K-type stars are orange stars with surface temperatures of about 3,900 to 5,300 K. Their spectra are rich in neutral metal lines and, in the cooler examples, molecular bands. 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 Mu Muscae in the sky
Mu Muscae lies in Musca. With a declination of -66° 48.9', it is visible from the entire Southern Hemisphere and from the Northern Hemisphere up to about latitude 23° N. Observers poleward of latitude 23° 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 April, which makes the weeks around that month the best time to observe it.
Tabulated data for Mu Muscae
Astrometry and spectroscopy
| Right Ascension (J2000) | 177.06056292° (11h 48.2m) |
| Declination (J2000) | -66.81490961° (-66° 48.9') |
| Galactic Longitude | 296.75767638° |
| Galactic Latitude | -4.70373654° |
| Proper motion RA | 30.34 mas/yr |
| Proper motion Dec | -15.71 mas/yr |
| Parallax | 6.85 ± 0.09 mas |
| Spectral Type | K4III |
| Radial Velocity | 37.40 km/s |
Photometry
| Band | Magnitude | Abs. Mag. |
|---|---|---|
| B | 6.28 | 0.46 |
| V | 4.73 | -1.09 |
| J | 2.12 | -3.70 |
| H | 1.38 | -4.44 |
| K | 1.19 | -4.63 |
Colour index B-V: +1.55
Derivations
- Heliocentric distance: 145.93 pc (476 light years) (1.4% margin of error)
- Absolute visual magnitude: -1.09
- Transverse velocity: 23.6 km/s
- Space velocity relative to the Sun: 44.2 km/s
- Galactic position (X, Y, Z): 65.5 pc, -129.9 pc, -12.0 pc
- Galactic velocity (U, V, W): 37.1 km/s, -22.5 km/s, -8.5 km/s
Data: Extended Hipparcos Compilation (XHIP) and SIMBAD.