BM Scorpii


BM Scorpii is a red supergiant and a semiregular variable star located in the constellation Scorpius. It lies approximately away in the open cluster Messier 6, the Butterfly Cluster. Although its brightness varies, it is at least occasionally visible to the naked eye of an observer with dark skies far from city lights.

Characteristics

BM Scorpii is a red supergiant of spectral type K2Ib. While it is listed as a standard star for that spectral class, it is also considered to have somewhat stronger H absorption lines than normal. Its luminosity and mass are considered to be borderline for a supergiant star, and its spectral class has been given as K3III, which would indicate a giant star.
BM Scorpii is a confirmed member of the open cluster Messier 6 and the brightest star in the cluster. The brightest other stars in the cluster are late B- and A-class main sequence stars. A search has been made for other cool supergiant members, but none were found.
With an effective temperature of and a radius of, BM Scorpii has a bolometric luminosity of. Its angular diameter has been measured at.

Variability

In 1920 Annie Cannon discovered that BM Scorpii is a variable star, and it was included in the first edition of the General Catalogue of Variable Stars. The brightness variations between apparent magnitudes 5.25 and 6.46 are not entirely regular, but were reported to show a primary period of 815 days. In Hipparcos satellite photometry, the dominant variation period is 4.6 days with an amplitude of 0.05 magnitudes. No secondary period longer than 815 days was detected.