3 Canum Venaticorum, a red giant star in Canes Venatici
3 Canum Venaticorum is a red giant star in the constellation Canes Venatici. At 637 light years away, it shines at an apparent visual magnitude of 5.29.
3 Canum Venaticorum (HIP 60122)
3 Canum Venaticorum is a red giant star in the constellation Canes Venatici. At 637 light years away, it shines at an apparent visual magnitude of 5.29. It is moving through the Galaxy at a speed of 15.7 km/s relative to the Sun.
Sky position: RA 12h 19.8m, Dec +48° 59.0'
Common designations: 3 Canum Venaticorum, HR 4690, HD 107274, HIP 60122, Gaia DR3 1547080896862730112
3 Canum Venaticorum has the spectral type M0III. 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 3 Canum Venaticorum in the sky
3 Canum Venaticorum lies in Canes Venatici. With a declination of +48° 59.0', it is visible from the entire Northern Hemisphere and from the Southern Hemisphere down to about latitude 41° S. Observers poleward of latitude 41° N 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 3 Canum Venaticorum
Astrometry and spectroscopy
| Right Ascension (J2000) | 184.95296082° (12h 19.8m) |
| Declination (J2000) | 48.98414637° (+48° 59.0') |
| Galactic Longitude | 136.46318412° |
| Galactic Latitude | 67.30486086° |
| Proper motion RA | -13.89 mas/yr |
| Proper motion Dec | 5.80 mas/yr |
| Parallax | 5.12 ± 0.08 mas |
| Spectral Type | M0III |
| Radial Velocity | 7.18 km/s |
Photometry
| Band | Magnitude | Abs. Mag. |
|---|---|---|
| U | 8.92 | 2.47 |
| B | 6.95 | 0.50 |
| V | 5.29 | -1.16 |
| J | 2.13 | -4.32 |
| H | 1.33 | -5.12 |
| K | 1.11 | -5.34 |
Colour index B-V: +1.66
Derivations
- Heliocentric distance: 195.17 pc (637 light years) (1.6% margin of error)
- Absolute visual magnitude: -1.16
- Transverse velocity: 13.9 km/s
- Space velocity relative to the Sun: 15.7 km/s
- Galactic position (X, Y, Z): -54.6 pc, 51.9 pc, 180.1 pc
- Galactic velocity (U, V, W): -15.4 km/s, 0.1 km/s, 3.1 km/s
Data: Extended Hipparcos Compilation (XHIP) and SIMBAD.