Wolf 359

light-years
Proper names: CN Leonis
Catalog numbers:
     Wolf 359, Gliese (Gl) 406, Giclas (G) 45-20, Luyten FT (LFT) 750, Luyten Two-Tenth (LTT) 12923, Luyten Half-Second (LHS) 36
Age: less than 10 000 million years
Heavy element abundance: Galactic plane population (about the same as Sol)
Arity: singular
Points of interest:
     Besides its proximity to our own sun, this tiny star is one of the least luminous known, even though astronomers suspect that such intrinsically faint stars are probably very common in space.  Alpha Centauri Proxima is another super-dim star of this ilk; and, like Proxima Centauri, Wolf 359 is now known to be a flare star (hence the CN Leonis variable star designation). Wolf 359's flare outbursts are rarer and not as violent as those of Proxima Centauri or UV Ceti.

Right Ascension and Declination: 10h54m6s, +7°19'12" (epoch 1950.0)
Distance from Sol: 7.797 light-years (2.391 parsecs)
Standard error in distance: 0.5941%
Source for distance: Gliese
Celestial (X,Y,Z) coordinates in ly: -7.416, 2.193, 0.993
Galactic (X,Y,Z) coordinates in ly: -1.896, -3.902, 6.478
Proper motion: 4.696 arcsec/yr (234.6° from north)
Radial Velocity: 13 km/sec
Source for proper motion and radial velocity: Gliese
Galactic (U,V,W) velocity components in km/s: -26.23, -44.30, -18.72

What do all these fields mean?


Spectral class: M6e
Luminosity Class: V
Apparent visual magnitude: +13.45
Absolute visual magnitude: +16.56
Visual luminosity: 0.0000207 x Sol
Variable type: UV Ceti flare star (eruptive variable)
Color indices: B-V= +2.00, U-B= +1.21, R-I= +1.84
Mass: 0.093 x Sol
Diameter: 0.13 x Sol
Comfort Zone (visual): 0.00455 A.U.s
Orbital period in CZ: 8.83395 hours
Tidal index in CZ: 984676
Angular size of star in sky in CZ: 15.218242 degrees

light-years
but not more than light-years away
Data for this star system were most recently updated on 4-April-2001.