53 Leonis Star Facts (Distance, Colour & more)

53 Leonis is a Main Sequence Star that is located in the constellation of Leo. Based on the spectral type (A2V) of the star, the 53 Leonis colour is blue - white . It is not part of the Leo constellation outline but is within the borders of the constellation.

The star can be seen with the naked eye, that is, you don't need a telescope/binoculars to see it.

53 Leonis is located in the Milky Way galaxy, this is the galaxy that you reside in. In case you're wondering, 53 Leonis is not located within the Solar System, there is only one star in the Solar System and that is the Sun.

There are no Exoplanets recorded on the site for the star and is most likely the case. If an exoplanet had been spotted or confirmed, it will probably be recorded in Exoplanet EU database.

No one has visited 53 Leonis and we have no probes on a rendezvous with the star.

Using the most recent figures given by the 2007 Hipparcos data, 53 Leonis distance from Earth is 380.59 light years. When you look at 53 Leonis, you are in fact looking back in time, you are seeing how it looks years ago. Roughly, change the distance from light years to years, that will tell you how long ago we are looking at the star.

53 Leonis Location

The location of the main sequence star in the night sky is determined by the Right Ascension (R.A.) and Declination (Dec.), these are equivalent to the Longitude and Latitude on the Earth. The Right Ascension is how far expressed in time (hh:mm:ss) the star is along the celestial equator. If the R.A. is positive then its eastwards. The Declination is how far north or south the object is compared to the celestial equator and is expressed in degrees. For 53 Leonis, the location is 10h 49m 15.43 and +10° 32` 42.9 .

53 Leonis Radial Velocity and Proper Motion

53 Leonis Proper Motion

All stars like planets orbit round a central spot, in the case of planets, its the central star such as the Sun. In the case of a star, its the galactic centre. The constellations that we see today will be different than they were 50,000 years ago or 50,000 years from now. Proper Motion details the movements of these stars and are measured in milliarcseconds. The star is moving -24.52 ± 0.17 milliarcseconds/year towards the north and -3.31 ± 0.3 milliarcseconds/year east if we saw them in the horizon.

53 Leonis Radial Velocity

The Radial Velocity, that is the speed at which the star is towards the Sun is -6.80000 km/s with an error of about 2.80 km/s . When the value is negative then the star and the Sun are getting closer to one another, likewise, a positive number means that two stars are moving away. Its nothing to fear as the stars are so far apart, they won't collide in our life-time, if ever.

53 Leonis Physical Properties

53 Leonis Colour

Based on the star's spectral type of A2V , 53 Leonis's colour and type is blue - white main sequence star.

There is no relationship between colour and size, a red star can be both the largest and the smallest stars in the Universe. Small stars are more energy efficient than larger stars and live longer.

53 Leonis Temperature

Based on the spectral type as we don't have the exact temperature', we can deduce that the surface temperature of the star is in the order of 7,500 and 10,000K based on the notes from Harvard University. To put this in context, the temperature of our Sun is about 5,778 Kelvin as said by Google.

• Blue (O) > 25,000K
• Blue/White (B) = 10,000 - 25,000K
• Blue/White (A) = 7,500 - 10,000K
• Yellow/White (F) = 6,000 - 7,500K
• Yellow (G) = 5,000 - 6,000K
• Orange/Red (K) = 3,500 - 5000K
• Red (M) = < 3,500K
• Red (C) = < 3,500K

There is a relationship between colour and temperature, stars that are closer to red in the rainbow spectrum are cooler whereas those closer to blue are hotter. Those that are blue stars are normally identified as being young stars whereas redder stars are usually older stars, ones that are at the end of their life. An example of when its a Blue Straggler, the star has stolen matter from a nearby star and grown to appear youthful when its not. These stars are found mainly in Star Clusters.

53 Leonis Luminosity

Luminosity is the amount of energy that a star pumps out and its relative to the amount that our star, the Sun gives out. Our star, the Sun's value is 1. ' The figure of 93.4 that I have given is based on the value in the Simbad Hipparcos Extended Catalogue at the University of Strasbourg from 2012. The star generates more energy than our star.

53 Leonis Radius

53 Leonis estimated radius has been calculated as being 3.289 times bigger than the Sun. The Sun's radius is 695,800km, therefore the star's radius is an estimated 2,288,193.713.km. If you need the diameter of the star, you just need to multiple the radius by 2. However with the 2007 release of updated Hipparcos files, the radius is now calculated at being round 3.758. The figure is derived at by using the formula from SDSS rather than peer reviewed papers. It has been known to produce widely incorrect figures.

53 Leonis Apparent (Brightness) and Absolute Magnitudes

Absolute Magnitude is the apparent magnitude of the star from a distance of 10 parsecs or 32.6 light years. This assumes that there is nothing in between the object and the viewer such as dust clouds. To really compare the brightness of the star, it is best to use Absolute rather than Apparent Magnitude.

Magnitude, whether it be apparent/visual or absolute magnitude is measured by a number, the smaller the number, the brighter the Star is. Our own Sun is the brightest star and therefore has the lowest of all magnitudes, -26.74. A faint star will have a high number.

53 Leonis apparent magnitude is 5.32, this is a measure of the brightness of the star as seen from Earth. Apparent Magnitude is also known as Visual Magnitude. If you used the 1997 Parallax value, 53 Leonis absolute magnitude is 0.27 If you used the 2007 Parallax value, 53 Leonis absolute magnitude is -0.02.

Visible from Earth

53 Leonis is visible from Earth. The lower the Apparent Magnitude of a star or other object is, the easier it is to see in the night sky. An object with a magnitude greater than 6.5 can not be seen without the aid of a telescope or other device.

53 Leonis Distance from Earth

Using the original Hipparcos data that was released in 1997, the parallax to the star was given as 9.76000 which means 53 Leonis distance from Earth is 334.18 light years away from Earth or 102.46 parsecs. If you want that in miles, it is about 1,964,519,027,210,498.79, based on 1 Ly = 5,878,625,373,183.61 miles.

In 2007, Hipparcos data was revised with a new parallax of 8.57000 which puts 53 Leonis distance from Earth as 380.59 light years or 116.69 parsecs. It should not be taken as though the star is moving closer or further away from Earth. It is purely that the distance was recalculated.

Using the 2007 distance, the star is roughly 24,068,872.527 Astronomical Units from the Earth/Sun give or take a few. An Astronomical Unit is the distance between Earth and the Sun. The number of A.U. is the number of times that the star is from the Earth compared to the Sun. The star's Galacto-Centric Distance is 7,436 Parsecs or 24,253.506 Light Years. The Galacto-Centric Distance is the distance from the star to the Centre of the Galaxy which is Sagittarius A*.

Alternative Names and Meanings

• EPIC in EPIC248794270 stands for Ecliptic Plane Input Catalog. It is a publicly available, searchable database of stars and planets. It can be accessed at STSCI.
• The Id of the star in the Yale Bright Star Catalogue is HR4227.
• HIP52911 is the reference name for the star in the Hipparcos Star Catalogue.
• The Id of the star in the Henry Draper catalogue is HD93702. The catalogue was started by the American doctor and has been expanded on over the years.
• The star is catalogued in the Tycho-2 star catalogue as TYC-849-1444-1. The catalogue lists 2 millions stars and its homepage is E.S.A.
• Flamsteed designations such as 53 Leonis (53 Leo) are named after the creator, Sir John Flamsteed. Sir John named the stars in the constellation with a number and its latin name, this star's Flamsteed designation is 53 Leonis. The Flamsteed name can be shortened to 53 Leo.
• BD number is the number that the star was filed under in the Durchmusterung or Bonner Durchmusterung, a star catalogue that was put together by the Bonn Observatory between 1859 to 1903. The star's BD Number is BD +11 2283.

53 Leonis Travel Time

The time it will take to travel to this star is dependent on how fast you are going. U.G. has done some calculations as to how long it will take going at differing speeds. A note about the calculations, when I'm talking about years, I'm talking non-leap years only (365 days).

The New Horizons space probe is the fastest probe that we've sent into space at the time of writing. Its primary mission was to visit Pluto which at the time of launch (2006), Pluto was still a planet.

Mach 1 is the speed of sound, Mach 2 is twice the speed of sound. Corncorde before it was retired was the fastest commercial airline across the Atlantic and only one that could do Mach 2.

Source of Information

The source of the information if it has a Hip I.D. is from Simbad, the Hipparcos data library based at the University at Strasbourg, France. Hipparcos was a E.S.A. satellite operation launched in 1989 for four years. The items in red are values that I've calculated so they could well be wrong. }