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Iota Andromedae

star in the constellation Andromeda

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ1361524 ↗
Source-derived summary

Iota Andromedae, also named Rasalnaqa, is a single star in the northern constellation of Andromeda. It has the Flamsteed designation 17 Andromedae, while Iota Andromedae is the Bayer designation as Latinized from ι Andromedae. This object is visible to the naked eye at night as a faint, blue-white hued star with an apparent visual magnitude of +4.29. Based upon parallax measurements, it is located approximately 510 light years distant from the Sun.

This object is a B-type main-sequence star with a stellar classification of B8 V. It is among the least variable stars observed during the Hipparcos mission. The star is 116 million years old with 3.1 times the mass of the Sun and is spinning with a projected rotational velocity of 70 km/s. It is radiating 638 times the luminosity of the Sun from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 12,620 K. The star is somewhat metal-poor, although the abundance of helium is close to solar. The latter excludes it from membership among the class of peculiar stars. Iota Andromedae is a debris disk candidate, showing an infrared excess at a wavelength of 18 μm.

Name

In the catalogue of stars in the Calendarium of Al Achsasi al Mouakket, this star was designated Keff al-Salsalat (كف المسلسلة - kaf al-musalsala), which was translated into Latin as Manus Catenata, meaning hand of the chained woman (i.e.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Iota Andromedae” is star in the constellation Andromeda. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Iota, Andromedae and star, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 227-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Iota, Andromedae and star is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “star in the constellation Andromeda” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

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 Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1361524. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

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.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Iota Andromedae”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Iota Andromedae primary sources, Iota Andromedae archive and Iota research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Iota Andromedae” 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.