Omicron Velorum (ο Vel, ο Velorum) is a

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth ma ...

in the constellation Vela. It is the brightest member of the loose naked eye

open cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, and ...

IC 2391 IC 2391 (also known as the Omicron Velorum Cluster or Caldwell 85) is an open cluster in the constellation Vela. The Persian astronomer Al Sufi may have first described it about 964. It was found by Abbe Lacaille and cataloged as Lac II 5. T ...

, also known as the ο Velorum Cluster. OmicronVelLightCurve

Omicron Velorum is a blue-white B-type star with a mean

apparent 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 ...

of +3.60. It is probably a

main sequence In astronomy, 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 H ...

object, but has also been classified as a

subgiant A subgiant is a star that is brighter than a normal main-sequence star of the same spectral class, but not as bright as giant stars. The term subgiant is applied both to a particular spectral luminosity class and to a stage in the evolution of ...

giant In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: ''gigas'', cognate giga-) are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''giant'' is first attested in 1297 fr ...

. It is approximately 495

light years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surface ...

. A slowly pulsating B star, it ranges between magnitudes 3.57 and 3.63 over 2.8 days. The correct

Bayer designation A Bayer designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek or Latin letter followed by the genitive form of its parent constellation's Latin name. The original list of Bayer designations contained 1,564 stars. T ...

for ο Velorum has been debated.

Lacaille Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille (; 15 March 171321 March 1762), formerly sometimes spelled de la Caille, was a French astronomer and geodesist who named 14 out of the 88 constellations. From 1750 to 1754, he studied the sky at the Cape of Good ...

assigned one Greek letter sequence for the bright stars of

Argo Navis Argo Navis (the Ship Argo), or simply Argo, is one of the 48 Ptolemy's constellations, now a grouping of three IAU constellations. It is formerly a single large constellation in the southern sky. The genitive is "Argus Navis", abbreviated "Arg". ...

. These Lacaille designations are now shared across the three modern constellations of

Carina Carina may refer to: Places Australia * Carina, Queensland, a suburb in Brisbane * Carina Heights, Queensland, a suburb in Brisbane * Carina, Victoria, a locality in Mildura Serbia * Carina, Osečina, a village in the Kolubara District ...

Puppis Puppis is a constellation in the southern sky. Puppis, the Latin translation of "poop deck", was originally part of an over-large constellation Argo Navis (the ship of Jason and the Argonauts), which centuries after its initial description, was ...

, and Vela so that the same Greek letter is not usually found in more than one of the three. However, ο (omicron) is commonly used for stars in both Vela and

. Some authors contend that Lacaille actually assigned a Latin lower case 'o' to this star, while others suggest that ο Puppis should actually be a lower case 'o'. In the ''Coelum Australe Stelliferum'' itself, this star is labelled ο (omicron) Argus (du Navire in the French edition), while ο Puppis is labelled (Latin) o Argus in puppi (Pouppe du Navire in the French edition).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Omicron Velorum Velorum, Omicron B-type main-sequence stars 074195 042536 Slowly pulsating B stars Vela (constellation) 3447 PD-52 01583