Cetus (abbr. Cet, gen. Ceti)
The Whale or Sea Monster; a very large constellation
on the celestial equator, east of Eridanus and
south of Aries and Pisces.
Cetus contains the important variables Mira
and UV Ceti, the prototype UV Ceti star.
It is also home to two particularly interesting galaxies. M77 (NGC 1068)
is a Seyfert galaxy, seen almost face-on, that lies about 50 million light-years
away and 1° southeast of Delta Cet (magnitude 8.8; size 6.9' ×
5.9'; R.A. 02h 42.7m, Dec. -00° 01'). NGC 247 is a large, fairly bright
spiral galaxy with a compact nucleus (magnitude 8.8; size 20' × 7.4';
R.A. 00h 47.1m, Dec. -20° 46'). See below for details of the constellation's
brightest stars.
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Cetus. © 2003 Torsten Bronger.
Copied here under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
|
| Stars brighter than magnitude 4.0 |
| Star |
Visual
mag. |
Abs.
mag. |
Spectral
type |
Distance
(lt-yr) |
R.A. (h m s) |
Dec. ( ° ' '' ) |
| Beta (Deneb Kaitos)
|
2.04 |
-0.30 |
K0IIICH |
96 |
00 43 35 |
-17 59 12 |
| Alpha (Menkar) |
2.54 |
-1.61 |
M1.5IIIa |
220 |
03 02 17 |
+04 05 23 |
| Eta (Haratan) |
3.45 |
0.67 |
K1.5IIICN |
118 |
01 08 35 |
-10 10 56 |
| Gamma (Kaffaljidhma) |
3.47 |
1.47 |
A3V |
82 |
02 43 18 |
+03 14 09 |
| Tau Ceti |
3.49 |
5.68 |
G8V |
11.9 |
01 44 04 |
-15 56 15 |
| Iota (Baten Kaitos Shemali) |
3.56 |
-1.18 |
K1.5III |
290 |
00 19 26 |
-08 49 26 |
| Theta |
3.60 |
0.87 |
K0IIIb |
115 |
01 24 01 |
-08 11 01 |
| Zeta (Baten Kaitos) |
3.74 |
-0.76 |
K2IIIBa |
259 |
01 51 27 |
-10 20 06 |
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