Meet a star / Leo

Noquisi

Noquisi is a red star, among the coolest, in the constellation Leo.

A drawing in the star's own colour, worked out from its measured colour index. It is not a photograph.

How far

33 light years

The light you see from Noquisi tonight set off about 33 years ago. Everything we know about it is that much out of date.

How bright

0.00 of a Sun

It gives out one 210th of the Sun's visible light. It is too faint to see without a telescope.

Astronomers put its brightness in our sky at magnitude 10.67. Smaller numbers are brighter, and the faintest stars the eye can see are about 6.

How hot

About 3,800 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.

NoquisiThe Sun

Its names

Its own name
Noquisi
Hipparcos catalogue
HIP 57087
Spectral type
M3

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.