HD 123657
star in the constellation Boötes
HD 123657 (BY Boötis) is a star in the northern constellation of Boötes, near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper. It is a fifth-magnitude star, and can be spotted to the unaided eye in sufficiently dark skies, far from light pollution. Based on stellar parallax measurements, it is about 540 light-years distant.
This is a slow irregular variable with an apparent magnitude varying between 4.98 and 5.33. The variability of the brightness of HD 123657 was announced by Joel Stebbins and Charles Morse Huffer in 1928, based on observations made at Washburn Observatory. The star was given its variable star designation, BY Boötis, in 1973.
HD 123657 has a spectral classification of M4.5III, placing it as a cool red giant that exhausted its hydrogen supply.
The public source identifies “HD 123657” as star in the constellation Boötes. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around star, constellation and Boötes.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1749017. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1928 and 1973.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. 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 “HD 123657” 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.