Properties
Wezen is a supergiant of class F8 with a radius around 237 times that of the Sun. Its surface temperature is around 5,818 K, and it weighs around 17 solar masses. Its absolute magnitude is –6.87, and it lies around 1,600 light years away. It is rotating at a speed of around 28 km/s, and hence may take a year to rotate fully. Only around 10 million years old, Wezen has stopped fusing hydrogen in its core. Its outer envelope is beginning to expand and cool, and in the next 100,000 years it will become a red supergiant as its core fuses heavier and heavier elements. Once it has a core of iron, it will collapse and explode as a supernova.
If Wezen were as close to Earth as Sirius is, it would be as bright as a half-full moon.
Read more about this topic: Delta Canis Majoris
Famous quotes containing the word properties:
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society: to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)