Zeta1 Scorpii
star
Zeta1 Scorpii (Zeta1 Sco, ζ1 Scorpii, ζ1 Sco) is a binary star in the constellation of Scorpius, composed by an B-type hypergiant star as the primary, and a secondary of which little is known. It has an apparent visual magnitude which varies between 4.66 and 4.86. It is a member of the Scorpius OB1 association, and potentially of the open star cluster NGC 6231, also known as the "Northern jewel box" cluster.
Characteristics
ζ1 Scorpii's primary is a luminous blue variable according to its luminosity and spectral appearance, yet it has not shown the characteristic types of variability, hence is classified as a dormant LBV. It has around 36 times as massive as the Sun and is one of the most luminous stars known in the Galaxy, with an estimated bolometric luminosity between 1 and 1.6 million times that of the Sun and a radius around 160 times that of the Sun. The stellar wind from this supergiant is expelling matter from the star at the rate of 1.55 × 10−6 solar masses per year, or roughly the equivalent to the Sun's mass every 640,000 years.
The secondary has been detected using interferometry, and its discovery was announced in 2021. As of 2021, it has an angular separation of 11.54±0.10 mas along a position angle of 283.22°+0.76°−0.34°. It is 6.3 magnitudes fainter than the primary.
ζ1 Scorpii forms a naked eye double with ζ2 Scorpii, but the stars are merely coincidentally near in the line of sight from Earth. ζ2 is a mere 135 light-years distant and much less luminous in real terms.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zeta1 Scorpii” 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.