Starship Asterisk*

BDanielMayfield wrote: ↑Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:25 am

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Thu Jan 10, 2019 10:47 pm

BDanielMayfield wrote: ↑Thu Jan 10, 2019 7:46 pm What are the names of the three brightest stars in today's APOD? (The yellow one on the left and the two blue stars on the right.)

Courtesy of Astrometry.net. (Upper right zeta Pup = Naos, lower right gamma2 Vel = Regor)
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Thanks Chris. The yellow giant Suhail is interesting, being just under (probably) the mass needed to cause it to blow as a Supernova. Zeta Pup aka Naos is another matter however:

Zeta Puppis (ζ Puppis, abbreviated Zeta Pup, ζ Pup), also named Naos,[10] is a star in the constellation of Puppis.

The spectral class of O4 means this is one of the hottest, and most luminous, stars visible to the naked eye. It is one of the sky's few naked-eye class O-type stars as well as one of the closest to Earth.[6] It is a blue supergiant, one of the most luminous stars in the Milky Way. Visually it is over 10,000 times brighter than the Sun, but its high temperature means that most of its radiation is in the ultraviolet and its bolometric luminosity is over 500,000 times that of the Sun. It is also the 62nd brightest star in terms of apparent magnitude from Earth.

Naos is typical of O-type stars in having an extremely strong stellar wind, measured at 2,500 km/s,[11] which sees the star shed more than a millionth of its mass each year,[11] or about 10 million times that shed by the Sun over a comparable time period.

Ann, are ya slippin' just a little? How'd you miss this one? Surely you knew about it. You must have been short on time or something.

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Thu Jan 10, 2019 10:47 pm

BDanielMayfield wrote: ↑Thu Jan 10, 2019 7:46 pm What are the names of the three brightest stars in today's APOD? (The yellow one on the left and the two blue stars on the right.)

Courtesy of Astrometry.net. (Upper right zeta Pup = Naos, lower right gamma2 Vel = Regor)
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3139938.jpg

Zeta Puppis (ζ Puppis, abbreviated Zeta Pup, ζ Pup), also named Naos,[10] is a star in the constellation of Puppis.

The spectral class of O4 means this is one of the hottest, and most luminous, stars visible to the naked eye. It is one of the sky's few naked-eye class O-type stars as well as one of the closest to Earth.[6] It is a blue supergiant, one of the most luminous stars in the Milky Way. Visually it is over 10,000 times brighter than the Sun, but its high temperature means that most of its radiation is in the ultraviolet and its bolometric luminosity is over 500,000 times that of the Sun. It is also the 62nd brightest star in terms of apparent magnitude from Earth.

Naos is typical of O-type stars in having an extremely strong stellar wind, measured at 2,500 km/s,[11] which sees the star shed more than a millionth of its mass each year,[11] or about 10 million times that shed by the Sun over a comparable time period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_Velorum wrote:

Chris Peterson: lower right gamma2 Vel = Regor

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<<Gamma Velorum (γ Vel, γ Velorum) is a multiple star system in the constellation Vela. At a combined magnitude +1.7, it is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and by far the closest and brightest Wolf-Rayet star.

The γ Velorum system includes a pair of stars separated by 41", each of which is also a spectroscopic binary. γ2 Velorum, the brighter of the visible pair, contains a Wolf-Rayet star and a blue supergiant, while γ1 Velorum contains a blue giant and an unseen companion. It has the traditional name Suhail al Muhlif and the modern name Regor, but neither is approved by the International Astronomical Union.>>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 wrote:

Grissom, White, and Chaffee in front of the launch pad

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<<Apollo 1 was the first manned mission of the United States Apollo program. Planned as the first low Earth orbital test of the Apollo command and service module with a crew, to launch on February 21, 1967, the mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the command module. Apollo astronauts frequently aligned their spacecraft inertial navigation platforms and determined their positions relative to the Earth and Moon by sighting sets of stars with optical instruments. As a practical joke, the Apollo 1 crew named three of the stars in the Apollo catalog after themselves and introduced them into NASA documentation. Gamma Cassiopeiae became Navi – Ivan (Gus Grissom's middle name) spelled backwards. Iota Ursae Majoris became Dnoces – "Second" spelled backwards, for Edward H. White II. And Gamma Velorum became Regor – Roger (Chaffee) spelled backwards. These names quickly stuck after the Apollo 1 accident and were regularly used by later Apollo crews.>>

BDanielMayfield wrote: ↑Thu Jan 10, 2019 7:46 pm What are the names of the three brightest stars in today's APOD? (The yellow one on the left and the two blue stars on the right.)

Wikipedia wrote:

The Gamma Velorum system is composed of at least four stars. The brightest member, γ² Velorum or γ Velorum A, is a spectroscopic binary composed of a blue supergiant of spectral class O7.5 (~30 M☉), and a massive Wolf-Rayet star (~9 M☉, originally ~35 M☉).[9] The binary has an orbital period of 78.5 days and separation varying from 0.8 to 1.6 astronomical units. The Wolf-Rayet star is likely to end its life in a Type Ib supernova explosion; it is one of the nearest supernova candidates to the Sun.