Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What is the brightest star in the constellation Musca?
The pattern of the brightest stars resembles that of Ursa Minor, in that the stars form a pattern reminiscent of a bowl with a handle.[12] Lying south-southeast of Acrux in neighbouring Crux is Alpha Muscae.[16] It is the brightest star in the constellation with an apparent magnitude of 2.7. Lying around 310 light-years away, it is a blue-white star of spectral type B2IV-V that is around 4520 times as luminous and 8 times as massive as the Sun. The star is a Beta Cephei variable with about 4.7 times the Sun's diameter, and pulsates every 2.2hours, varying by 1% in brightness. A nearby star of magnitude13 may or may not be a companion star.[17] Marking the fly's tail is Gamma Muscae,[16] a blue-white star of spectral type B5V that varies between magnitudes 3.84 and 3.86 over a period of 2.7days. It is a variable of a different type, classed as a slowly pulsating B star, a type of variable.[18] It is around five times as massive as our Sun.[19]
The obsolete constellations introduced in Aries (Musca Borealis, Lilium, Vespa, and Apes) have all been composed of the northern stars. Musca Borealis was created from the stars 33 Arietis, 35 Arietis, 39 Arietis, and 41 Arietis. In 1612, Petrus Plancius introduced Apes, a constellation representing a bee. In 1624, the same stars were used by Jakob Bartsch to create a constellation called Vespa, representing a wasp. In 1679 Augustin Royer used these stars for his constellation Lilium, representing the fleur-de-lis. None of these constellation became widely accepted. Johann Hevelius renamed the constellation "Musca" in 1690 in his "Firmamentum Sobiescianum". To differentiate it from Musca, the southern fly, it was later renamed Musca Borealis but it did not gain acceptance and its stars were ultimately officially reabsorbed into Aries.
The Bayer designation ι Muscae (Iota Muscae) is shared by two stars in the constellation Musca:
This is the list of notable stars in the constellation Musca, sorted by decreasing brightness.
88 modern constellations by area Historical brightest stars: the brightest star in Earth's night sky at each period within the last or next 5 million years List of largest stars List of most luminous stars List of nearest bright stars List of nearest galaxies List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs Lists of constellations Lists of stars Lists of stars by constellation Stars and planetary systems in fiction
Historically, the origins of the constellations of the northern and southern skies are distinctly different. Most northern constellations date to antiquity, with names based mostly on Classical Greek legends.[10] Evidence of these constellations has survived in the form of star charts, whose oldest representation appears on the statue known as the Farnese Atlas, based perhaps on the star catalogue of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus.[32] Southern constellations are more modern inventions, sometimes as substitutes for ancient constellations (e.g. Argo Navis). Some southern constellations had long names that were shortened to more usable forms; e.g. Musca Australis became simply Musca.[10]
Many of the constellation's brighter stars are members of the Scorpius–Centaurus Association, a loose group of hot blue-white stars that appears to share a common origin and motion across the Milky Way. These include Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Zeta2 and (probably) Eta Muscae, as well as HD 100546, a blue-white Herbig Ae/Be star that is surrounded by a complex debris disk containing a large planet or brown dwarf and possible protoplanet. Two further star systems have been found to have planets. The constellation also contains two cepheid variables visible to the naked eye. Theta Muscae is a triple star system, the brightest member of which is a Wolf–Rayet star.
Even though Delta Muscae is the closest star to Earth in the Musca constellation, nearly 3800 stars are closer in proximity to the Earth as stated by the Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars, which includes stars within twenty-five parsecs of the Sun.
TU Muscae, also known as HD100213, is an eclipsing binary star in the constellation Musca. Its apparent magnitude ranges from 8.17 to 8.75 over around 1.4 days.
Beta Muscae, Latinized from β Muscae, is a binary star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Musca. With a combined apparent visual magnitude of 3.07, it is the second brightest star (or star system) in the constellation. Judging by the parallax results, it is located at a distance of roughly from the Earth.
S Muscae is a classical (δ) Cepheid variable star in the constellation Musca about 2,600 light years away.
Delta and Epsilon mark the fly's left wing and right wing, respectively.[16] With an apparent magnitude of 3.62, Delta is an orange giant of spectral type K2III located around 91light-years away.[26] Epsilon Muscae is a red giant of spectral type M5III and semiregular variable that ranges between magnitudes 3.99 and 4.31 over approximately 40days.[27] It has expanded to 130 times the Sun's diameter and 1800 to 2300 its luminosity. It was a star originally 1.5 to 2times as massive as our Sun. Although of a similar distance—around 302 light-years—to the stars of the Lower Centaurus Crux subgroup, it is moving much faster at around 100km/s and does not share a common origin.[28] To the northwest lies Mu Muscae, an orange giant of spectral type K4III that varies between apparent magnitude 4.71 and 4.76, and has been classified as a slow, irregular variable.[29] Near Mu is Lambda Muscae, the third-brightest star in the constellation and a white main-sequence star of spectral type A7V around 128light-years distant from Earth.[30]
Theta Muscae (θ Muscae) is a multiple star system in the constellation Musca ("the Fly") with an apparent magnitude of 5.5. It is the second-brightest Wolf–Rayet star in the sky, although much of the visual brightness comes from the massive companions and it is not one of the closest of its type.
ι Muscae, Latinised as Iota Muscae, is a solitary star in the constellation Musca. Its apparent magnitude is 5.04. Located around distant, it is an orange giant of spectral type K0III, a star that has used up its core hydrogen and is cooling and expanding. The measured angular diameter is . At the estimated distance of the star, this yields a physical size of about 11 times the radius of the Sun.
Alpha Muscae (α Muscae, α Mus) is a star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Musca. With an apparent visual magnitude of +2.7, it is the brightest star in the constellation. The distance to this star has been determined using parallax measurements, giving an estimate of about from Earth.
Delta Muscae, Latinized from δ Muscae, often catalogued as HD 112985, is a spectroscopic binary star system and the closest to the Earth in the southern hemisphere constellation of Musca (the Fly) at a distance of approximately 27.8 parsecs (91.0 light years). The main star is classified as a giant star with an orange tint. It is one of the stars given a Bayer designation by astronomer Johann Bayer. It was recorded in Bayer's 1603 publication "Uranometria". In addition it is one of the main stars used in the visual formation of the Musca constellation.
Zeta Muscae, Latinized from ζ Muscae, is a star in the constellation Musca. Its apparent magnitude is 5.74. Located around 326 light-years distant, it is an orange giant of spectral type K0III, a star that has used up its core hydrogen and is cooling and expanding. The star is radiating 64 times the Sun's luminosity.
This constellation is no longer in use; the stars it contained are now included in Aries. The Southern Fly, Musca Australis, is now simply known as Musca.
Names similar to Deneb were given to at least seven different stars, most notably Deneb Kaitos, the brightest star in the constellation of Cetus; Deneb Algedi, the brightest star in Capricornus; and Denebola, the second brightest star in Leo. All these stars are referring to the tail of the animals that their respective constellations represent.
The Bayer designation ζ Muscae (Zeta Muscae, ζ Mus) is shared by two stars in the constellation Musca:
In most constellations, Bayer assigned Greek and Latin letters to stars within a constellation in rough order of apparent brightness, from brightest to dimmest. Since the brightest star in a majority of constellations is designated Alpha (α), many people wrongly assume that Bayer meant to order the stars exclusively by brightness. In Bayer's day, however, stellar brightness could not be measured precisely. Stars were traditionally assigned to one of six magnitude classes (the brightest to first magnitude, the dimmest to sixth), and Bayer typically ordered stars within a constellation by class: all the first-magnitude stars, followed by all the second-magnitude stars, and so on. Within each magnitude class, Bayer made no attempt to arrange stars by relative brightness. As a result, the brightest star in each class did not always get listed first in Bayer's order.
GQ Muscae, also known as Nova Muscae 1983 is a binary star system in the constellation Musca composed of a white dwarf and small star that is about 10% as massive as the Sun. The two orbit each other every 1.4 hours. The white dwarf accumulates material from its companion star on its accretion disc until it erupts, as it did in 1983, reaching a magnitude of 7.2. Discovered with a magnitude of 7.1 on 18 January 1983, it was the first nova from which X-rays were detected.
R Muscae is a yellow-white hued variable star in the southern constellation of Musca. It has a nominal apparent visual magnitude of 6.31, which is near the lower limit of visibility to the naked eye. The distance to this star, as determined from its annual parallax shift of , is around 3,260 light years.
Lambda Muscae is the farthest right star in the visual constellation of Musca and is thus the tail of the fly.
Lambda Muscae (λ Mus, λ Muscae), often catalogued HD 102249 or HIP 57363, is the fourth-brightest star in the Southern Hemisphere constellation of Musca (the Fly). Lambda Muscae visibly makes up the far end of the tail of the visual Musca constellation. It is a star in a dual system according to studies, and one of the stars catalogued in astronomer Johann Bayer's 1603 publications "Uranometria". Lambda Muscae more recently has been recorded as having a stellar classification of A7III. Thus, Lambda Muscae has a white tint and burns significantly hotter than the Sun.