Gamma Coronae Australis (γ CrA), is a

binary star A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in ...

located in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellation ...

Corona Australis Corona Australis is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its Latin name means "southern crown", and it is the southern counterpart of Corona Borealis, the northern crown. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-cent ...

. The system has a combined

apparent visual magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's lig ...

of 4.20, making it faintly visible to the naked eye. It is located 56.4

light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distance, astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 Orders of magnitude (numbers)#1012, trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 ...

s (17.3

parsec The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to or (au), i.e. . The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry, an ...

s) from the Sun, based on its

parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening, nearby object ...

. Gamma Coronae Australis is a member of the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

's thin disk. The system is a visual binary, where the orbit is calculated from observations of one star orbiting the other. The primary, Gamma Coronae Australis A, is a late

F-type main-sequence star An F-type main-sequence star (F V) is a main-sequence, hydrogen-fusing star of spectral type F and luminosity class V. These stars have from 1.0 to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 6,000 and 7,600 K.Tables VII ...

with an effective temperature of 6,090 K. It has an absolute an absolute magnitude of +3.73, and a mass of 1.15

solar mass The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass ...

es. The secondary, Gamma Coronae Australis B, is also F-type. With an effective temperature of 6,100 K, an absolute magnitude of +3.80, and a mass of 1.14 solar masses, the companion is almost identical to the primary. Gamma Coronae Australis has been known to be a binary for a long time, and its two components have been given Henry Draper Catalogue designations of HD 177474 and HD 177475, respectively. The two stars are separated by 1.896 and orbit each other every 121.76 years.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gamma Coronae Australis Corona Australis, Gamma Binary stars Corona Australis Corona Australis, Gamma Durchmusterung objects 177475 093825 7227