EK Eridani
variable star in the constellation Eridanus
EK Eridani is a single variable star in the equatorial constellation of Eridanus. It has the designation HR 1362 from the Bright Star Catalogue; EK Eridani is the variable star designation, abbreviated EK Eri. This star is dimly visible to the naked eye with a brightness that fluctuates between 6.1 and 6.4 Based on parallax measurements, it is located at a distance of 209 light years from the Sun. The star is drifting further away with a heliocentric radial velocity of 6.9 km/s.
From South Africa in 1964, R. Lake reported a variation of 0.7 in the visual magnitude of this star. In 1973, W. P. Bidelman and D. J. MacConnell placed HR 1362 on a list of brighter stars of astrophysical interest because it displayed emission in the H and K lines, although they were uncertain of this finding. F. M. Walter and S. Bowyer detected X-ray emission from this star in 1973, another indicator of magnetic activity in the chromosphere. A series of measurements of the brightness of this star were made from 1979 until 1984, demonstrating it is variable with a 154-day period. At the time, this was the longest period known for a chromospherically active star. By 1990, this period was revised upward to 335 days.
The public source identifies “EK Eridani” as variable star in the constellation Eridanus. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Eridani, variable and star.
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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 May 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11144352. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1362, 1964, 1973 and 1979.
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 “EK Eridani” 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.