Iota Piscium
Encyclopedia
Iota Piscium is a star
45 light years away from Earth
, in the constellation Pisces
. The star is a yellowish dwarf
(main sequence) star of spectral type
F7V, which is somewhat larger and brighter than our sun, but still within the range considered to have the potential for Earth-like planets. It has a surface temperature of about 6,000 to 7,500 kelvin
. Iota Piscium is a suspected variable star
, and was once thought to have one or two stellar companions, but both are line-of-sight coincidences.
Star
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
45 light years away from Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, in the constellation Pisces
Pisces (constellation)
Pisces is a constellation of the zodiac. Its name is the Latin plural for fish, and its symbol is . It lies between Aquarius to the west and Aries to the east...
. The star is a yellowish dwarf
Main sequence
The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell...
(main sequence) star of spectral type
Stellar classification
In astronomy, stellar classification is a classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. The spectral class of a star is a designated class of a star describing the ionization of its chromosphere, what atomic excitations are most prominent in the light, giving an objective measure...
F7V, which is somewhat larger and brighter than our sun, but still within the range considered to have the potential for Earth-like planets. It has a surface temperature of about 6,000 to 7,500 kelvin
Kelvin
The kelvin is a unit of measurement for temperature. It is one of the seven base units in the International System of Units and is assigned the unit symbol K. The Kelvin scale is an absolute, thermodynamic temperature scale using as its null point absolute zero, the temperature at which all...
. Iota Piscium is a suspected variable star
Variable star
A star is classified as variable if its apparent magnitude as seen from Earth changes over time, whether the changes are due to variations in the star's actual luminosity, or to variations in the amount of the star's light that is blocked from reaching Earth...
, and was once thought to have one or two stellar companions, but both are line-of-sight coincidences.