21 Canum Venaticorum
star in the constellation Canes Venatici
21 Canum Venaticorum is a single variable star in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici, located 279 light years away from the Sun. This object has the variable star designation BK Canum Venaticorum; 21 Canum Venaticorum is the Flamsteed designation. It is visible to the naked eye as a faint white-hued star with a baseline apparent visual magnitude of +5.14.
According to Garrison et al. (1994) this is a B-type subgiant star with a stellar classification of B9 IV (Si), where the suffix notation indicates this is a Silicon star. Cowley et al. (1969) listed it with a class of A0 V Si:, which would match an A-type main-sequence star with the ':' indicating some uncertainty in the classification. It is a marginally chemically-peculiar star with weaker than normal helium absorption lines and displaying helium line variability. The widths of the lines of ionized silicon vary with a period of 21.12 ± 0.48 hours.
21 Canum Venaticorum is classified as an Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum type variable star and its brightness varies by 0.04 magnitudes over a period of 18.4 hours.
“21 Canum Venaticorum” enters the record as star in the constellation Canes Venatici. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Canum, Venaticorum and star can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“21 Canum Venaticorum” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Canum, Venaticorum and star provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4348507. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1994 and 1969.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “21 Canum Venaticorum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.