Stars in Virgo
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Stars in Virgo |
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Spica (Alpha Virigins) Virgo's leading lady is one hot star - the 16th brightest star in the sky, but at 20,000 degrees, she makes even Regulus seem luke warm. The intense heat of Spica not only gives it a distinctive color - blue-white, almost purplish white - but this star also boasts lots of that light: 4800 times the output of our sun. This is a genuine luminary of space, and it manages to be a bright star from Earth, even from a distance of 263 light years. An interesting note is that Spica is "exactly" first magnitude...almost. The star averages magnitude 1.00, but is actually slightly variable in a period of 4.0142 days. The range is too small to notice, magnitudes 0.97-1.04, but this hot star simply can not make up her mind!
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Porrima (Gamma Virginis) Porrima is an attractive double star, a near neighbor to the sun at just 32 light years. These two stars can be split with a good amateur scope, but the job is getting harder as the stars swing closer together in their 171 year orbit. The present separation of 4.5 arc seconds will shrink until the year 2007, when they will begin to widen apart again. The brightnesses of the stars are almost equal, magnitude 3.5, which translates into seven solar luminosities for each star.
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