Phi Aurigae


Phi Aurigae is a giant star in the northern constellation of Auriga. Its name is a Bayer designation that is Latinized from φ Aurigae, and abbreviated Phi Aur or φ Aur. This star is faintly visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of 5.089. It lies from another faint naked-eye star HD 35520, between the three open clusters M36 and M38, and NGC 1893.
The distance to this star, as determined from parallax measurements, is approximately with a 9 light-year margin of error. It is drifting further away from the Sun with a radial velocity of +31 km/s.
This is an evolved giant star with a stellar classification of K3 IIIp. Having exhausted the supply of hydrogen at its core, it has expanded to 34 times the radius of the Sun. It is radiating over 300 times the luminosity of the Sun from its enlarged photosphere at an effective temperature of 4,222 K, giving it the cool orange-hued glow of a K-type star.