Groombridge 1830
star in the constellation Ursa Major
Groombridge 1830, also known as Argelander's Star, is a star 29.9 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. With an apparent magnitude of 6.4, it is near the limit of naked eye visibility under ideal conditions. It has a low metallicity and is thought to be a superflare star.
Discovery and naming
The star was catalogued by British astronomer Stephen Groombridge with the Groombridge Transit Circle between 1806 and the 1830s and published posthumously in his star catalog, Catalogue of Circumpolar Stars (1838). The designation Groombridge 1830 comes from this catalog; in older sources it may be written as 1830 Groombridge. Its high proper motion was noted by Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander in 1842, and so it is sometimes called Argelander's Star, a name first used in an 1853 paper. Due to its high proper motion, it has also been called the Flying Star or Runaway Star (compare 61 Cygni and Barnard's Star).
Other designations for this star include HD 103095, HR 4550, and Gliese 451. It has the variable star designation CF Ursae Majoris, which originally referred to a supposed flaring companion star that is no longer believed to exist.
Description
Groombridge 1830 has been variously classified as a K-type main-sequence star, a G-type main-sequence star, or a G-type subdwarf.
“Groombridge 1830” enters the record as star in the constellation Ursa Major. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Groombridge, star and constellation can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1154100. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1830, 1806, 1838 and 1842.
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This entry incorporates text from “Groombridge 1830” 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.