78 Virginis
star in the constellation Virgo

78 Virginis is a variable star in the zodiac constellation of Virgo, located 175 light-years from the Sun. It has the variable star designation CW Virginis and the Bayer designation o Virginis; 78 Virginis is the Flamsteed designation. This object is visible to the naked eye as a faint, white-hued star with an apparent visual magnitude of 4.92. It is moving closer to the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of −10 km/s.
This is an Ap star with a stellar classification of ApEuCrSr, displaying strong lines of strontium, chromium, and other iron peak elements. In 1967, Kazimierz Stepień discovered that the star's brightness varies. It is classified as an Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variable, ranging in magnitude from 4.91 down to 4.99 with a period of 3.722 days. 78 Virginis is the first star other than the Sun to have a magnetic field detected; it displays a dipole structure with a surface intensity of around 3.3 kG. It is a candidate rapidly oscillating Ap (roAp) star. This star is 435 million years old with 2.16 times the mass of the Sun and 2.11 times the Sun's radius.
“78 Virginis” enters the record as star in the constellation Virgo. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Virginis, star and constellation can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“78 Virginis” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Virginis, star and constellation provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5737717. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “78 Virginis” 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.