Iklil is a hot blue-white star in the head of Scorpius whose Arabic name means the crown, a young member of a great nearby family of massive stars.
At a glance
| type | blue-white star (class B) |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 472 light-years (145 pc) |
| its light left it | 472 years ago |
| luminosity | 3,620 × the Sun |
| radius | 4.14 × the Sun |
| surface temperature | 22,000 K |
| constellation | Scorpius (Scorpion) |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with.
About Iklil
Iklil is a blue-white star of class B, hot and vastly more luminous than the Sun. It is a spectroscopic binary, its companion revealed only by the shifting lines in its spectrum.
Its name comes from the Arabic for the crown, the name of one of the lunar mansions, the stations of the Moon along the ecliptic. Like Acrab, Dschubba and Fang, it belongs to the Scorpius–Centaurus association, the nearest region of recent massive star formation to the Sun.
What you see in the piece
From Earth Iklil lines up with Fang, Dschubba and Acrab to form the scorpion’s head. In the piece these young hot stars stay loosely together, siblings born from the same clouds.
Questions
How far away is Iklil?
Iklil is 472 light-years (145 pc) from the Sun; its light left it 472 years ago.