Properties
Beta Cephei is a triple star comprising a spectroscopic binary with a magnitude 8 optical companion. Its magnitude varies between +3.15 and +3.21 with a period of 0.1904844 days.
Beta Cephei A is a blue giant star with a stellar classification listed in the SIMBAD astronomical database as B2IIIev. The suffix "ev" comes from the Yerkes classification system and stands for "Spectral emission that exhibits variability". This giant star has a radius that has been estimated at 9R☉ and a mass of 12M☉. Like most high mass B class stars, β Cep is a relatively young star with an estimated age of around 50 million years old. Like the majority of giant stars, Beta Cephei A rotates slowly on its axis with a rotational velocity of 28 km/s, a speed which takes the star approximately 51 days to make one complete revolution.
In 2007, Floor van Leeuwen and his team recalibrated the star's apparent magnitude at 3.1438 and updated the star's parallax to 4.76 ± 0.30 mas yielding a distance of 210.1 parsecs (pc) or approximately 685 light years (ly) from Earth. The previous estimate from the Hipparcos mission had placed the star at about 595 ly. Given a surface temperature of 26,700 Kelvin, theoretical calculations yield a total luminosity for the star of about 36,900L☉.
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