Axólotl
Axólotl is a yellow star, much like the Sun in temperature, in the constellation Cetus. It is in the long, steady part of its life, making helium from hydrogen in its core, as the Sun is.
How far
320 light years
The light you see from Axólotl tonight set off about 320 years ago. Everything we know about it is that much out of date.
At this distance the figure could be out by a tenth or so.
How bright
4.3 Suns
It gives out 4.3 times as much visible light as the Sun. It is too faint to see without a telescope.
Astronomers put its brightness in our sky at magnitude 8.23. Smaller numbers are brighter, and the faintest stars the eye can see are about 6.
How hot
About 5,800 K
That is the temperature of its surface, worked out from its colour, so it is a guide and not a measurement. It could be out by a few hundred degrees. The Sun's is 5,772 K. Hotter stars are bluer and cooler stars are redder, the same way a poker in a fire goes from red to white.
AxólotlThe Sun
Its names
- Its own name
- Axólotl
- Hipparcos catalogue
- HIP 118319
- Henry Draper catalogue
- HD 224693
- Spectral type
- G2V
Where this comes from
Distance, brightness, colour and spectral type are from the HYG star database, version 4.4, by David Nash, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Its distances are those measured by the Hipparcos satellite. The temperature is worked out here from the colour with the formula of Ballesteros (2012), and the words are written for this site.
To read more: Colour and brightness, How stars live and die, Measuring distance.