Alpha Caeli
star in the constellation Caelum
Alpha Caeli is a binary star system in the southern constellation Caelum. Its name is a Bayer designation that is Latinized from α Caeli, and abbreviated Alpha Cae or α Cae. With a combined apparent visual magnitude of 4.45, it is only visible to the naked eye in places far from light pollution, but still is the brightest star in the constellation. Parallax measurements by the Gaia spacecraft indicate a distance of 66.48 light-years (20.38 pc) to Alpha Caeli. It has a relatively low radial velocity, estimated at 0.7 km/s relative to the Sun.
This system consists of an F-type star of magnitude 4.46 and a small red dwarf of magnitude 12.5. As of 2008, they are separated by 6.6" in the sky. A debris disk has been detected around the primary component of the system.
Physical properties
Primary
The primary component (α Caeli A) has a spectral classification of F2V, meaning that it is an ordinary F-type main-sequence star, currently fusing hydrogen into helium at its core. It is estimated to be 1.5 billion years old, has 50% more mass and has 1.55 times the Sun's radius.
The public source identifies “Alpha Caeli” as star in the constellation Caelum. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alpha, Caeli and star.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1196004. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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 “Alpha Caeli” 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.