U Camelopardalis is a semiregular variable

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

in the

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

Camelopardalis Camelopardalis is a large but faint constellation of the northern sky representing a giraffe. The constellation was introduced in 1612 or 1613 by Petrus Plancius. Some older astronomy books give Camelopardalus or Camelopardus as alternative for ...

. Based on

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 objects ...

measurements made by the

Hipparcos ''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions of celestial obj ...

spacecraft, it is located about 3,000

light-year 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 ...

s (1,000 parsecs) away from the Earth. Its apparent visual magnitude is about 8, which is dim enough that it cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The spectral type of U Camelopardalis in the revised MK system is C-N5, which indicates a classical carbon star spectrum approximately corresponding to late K or early M. The C₂ index is 5.5 which is typical of a C-N star. It is also given an alternative spectral type of MS4, indicating a star similar to an M4 class but with somewhat enhanced ZrO bands. The spectral type may vary between C3,9 and C6,4e. UCamLightCurve

U Camelopardalis is a

carbon star A carbon star (C-type star) is typically an asymptotic giant branch star, a luminous red giant, whose atmosphere contains more carbon than oxygen. The two elements combine in the upper layers of the star, forming carbon monoxide, which consumes mos ...

. These types of stars have greater levels of carbon in their atmospheres than oxygen, which means they form carbon compounds that make the star appear strikingly red. U Camelopardalis is nearly 4 magnitudes fainter at blue wavelengths than in the centre of the visual range. In the infrared K band it has an apparent magnitude of 0.37. Its brightness varies without a dominant period and it is classified as semi-regular, although a period of 400 days has been published. In the V photometric band the brightness varies by around half a magnitude, but the amplitude is nearly two magnitudes at blue wavelengths. The maximum visual magnitude has been given as 7.2. The shell of gas surrounding U Camelopardalis was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012, showing a nearly perfect sphere of gas surrounding the star. U Cameloparadlis has a 10th magnitude companion 308" away. It is a B8

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 Her ...

star, hotter but less luminous than U Cam itself. They are not thought to be physically associated.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:U Camelopardalis Carbon stars Camelopardalis Camelopardalis, U 022611 017257 Durchmusterung objects Semiregular variable stars Asymptotic-giant-branch stars