Magnitude 3.95 Apparent magnitude (V) 3.95 | Constellation Cetus | |
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Upsilon Ceti (υ Ceti, υ Cet) is a solitary star in the equatorial constellation of Cetus. It is visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of 3.95. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 11.14 mas, it is located about 293 light years from the Sun.
This star was designated Upsilon Ceti by Bayer and 59 Ceti by Flamsteed. Flamsteed also gave it the designation Upsilon2 Ceti to distinguish it from 56 Ceti, which he called Upsilon1. Flamsteed's superscripted designations, however, are not in general use today.
For ancient arabic astronomers, this star with η Cet (Deneb Algenubi), θ Cet (Thanih al Naamat), τ Cet (Durre Menthor) and ζ Cet (Baten Kaitos), formed Al Naʽāmāt (ألنعامة), the Hen Ostriches In Chinese, 鈇鑕 (Fū Zhì), meaning Sickle, refers to an asterism consisting of υ Ceti, 48 Ceti and 56 Ceti. Consequently, υ Ceti itself is known as 鈇鑕四 (Fū Zhì sì, English: the Fourth Star of Sickle.)
Upsilon Ceti is a evolved red giant star with a stellar classification of K5/M0III. It has an 84% chance on the red giant branch, or 16% to be on the horizontal branch. Stellar models based on the red giant branch status yield an estimated mass of around 126% of the Sun's mass and 54 times the radius of the Sun. This model indicates the star radiates around 550 times the solar luminosity from its outer atmosphere at an effective temperature of 3,822 K.