Algol

Coordinates: Sky map 03h 08m 10.1315s, +40° 57′ 20.332″
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This article is about the star. For the programming languages, see ALGOL. For other uses, see Algol (disambiguation).

Algol
Location of β Persei (circled)
Observation data
Epoch J2000      Equinox J2000
Constellation Perseus
Right ascension 03h 08m 10.13245s[1]
Declination +40° 57′ 20.3280″[1]
Apparent magnitude (V) 2.12[2] (- 3.39[3])
Characteristics
Spectral type Aa1: B8V[4]
Aa2: K0IV[4]
Ab: F1V[5] (kA4hA9.5mF0:[6])
U−B
colour index
 −0.37[2]
B−V
colour index
 −0.05[2]
Variable type EA/SD[3]
Distance
90 ± 3 ly
(28 ± 1 pc)
β Per Aa1
Absolute magnitude (MV)−0.07[7]
β Per Aa2
Absolute magnitude (MV)2.9[7]
β Per Ab
Absolute magnitude (MV)2.3[7]
Longitude of the node
(Ω)		43.43°
Argument of periastron
(ω)
(primary)		310.02°
Details
β Per Aa1
Myr
β Per Aa2
Mass0.70±0.08[8] M☉
Radius3.48±0.28[8] R☉
Luminosity6.92[7] L☉
Surface gravity (log g)3.5[9] cgs
Temperature4,500[9] K
β Per Ab
Mass1.76±0.15[8] M☉
Radius1.73±0.33[8] R☉
Luminosity10.0[7] L☉
Surface gravity (log g)4.5[9] cgs
Temperature7,500[9] K
HIP 14576, HR 936, PPM 45864, SAO
 38592.
Database references
SIMBADdata

Algol

multiple star in the constellation of Perseus and one of the first non-nova variable stars
to be discovered.

Algol is a

three-star system, consisting of Beta Persei Aa1, Aa2, and Ab – in which the hot luminous primary β Persei Aa1 and the larger, but cooler and fainter, β Persei Aa2 regularly pass in front of each other, causing eclipses. Thus Algol's magnitude is usually near-constant at 2.1, but regularly dips to 3.4 every 2.86 days during the roughly 10-hour-long partial eclipses. The secondary eclipse when the brighter primary star occults the fainter secondary is very shallow and can only be detected photoelectrically.[12]

Algol gives its name to its class of eclipsing variable, known as Algol variables.

Observation history

The Algol system on 12 August 2009. This is a CHARA interferometer image with 1/2-milliarcsecond resolution in the near-infrared H-band. The elongated appearance of Algol Aa2 (labelled B) and the round appearance of Algol Aa1 (labelled A) are real, but the form of Algol Ab (labelled C) is an artifact.
Light curve of the Algol recorded by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

An ancient Egyptian calendar of lucky and unlucky days composed some 3,200 years ago is said to be the oldest historical documentation of the discovery of Algol.[13][14] [15]

The association of Algol with a demon-like creature (

Book of Fixed Stars published c.964.[18]

The variability of Algol was noted in 1667 by Italian astronomer Geminiano Montanari,[19] but the periodic nature of its variations in brightness was not recognized until more than a century later, when the British amateur astronomer John Goodricke also proposed a mechanism for the star's variability.[20][21] In May 1783, he presented his findings to the Royal Society, suggesting that the periodic variability was caused by a dark body passing in front of the star (or else that the star itself has a darker region that is periodically turned toward the Earth). For his report he was awarded the Copley Medal.[22]

In 1881, the Harvard astronomer

University of Illinois Observatory used an early selenium cell photometer to produce the first-ever photoelectric study of a variable star. The light curve revealed the second minimum and the reflection effect between the two stars.[25]Some difficulties in explaining the observed spectroscopic features led to the conjecture that a third star may be present in the system; four decades later this conjecture was found to be correct.[26]

System

Algol Aa2 orbits Algol Aa1. This animation was assembled from 55 images of the CHARA interferometer in the near-infrared H-band, sorted according to orbital phase. Because some phases are poorly covered, Aa2 jumps at some points along its path.
interpolation
Interpolation of the orbit of Aa2 around Aa1 with focus on Aa1.

Algol is a multiple-star system with three confirmed and two suspected stellar components.

orbital plane contains the line of sight to the Earth. The eclipsing binary pair is separated by only 0.062 astronomical units (au) from each other, whereas the third star in the system (Algol Ab) is at an average distance of 2.69 au from the pair, and the mutual orbital period
of the trio is 681 Earth days. The total mass of the system is about 5.8 solar masses, and the mass ratios of Aa1, Aa2, and Ab are about 4.5 to 1 to 2.

The three components of the bright triple star used to be, and still sometimes are, referred to as β Per A, B, and C. The

arcmin distant. A further five faint stars are also listed as companions.[28]

The close pair consists of a B8 main sequence star and a much less massive K0 subgiant, which is highly distorted by the more massive star. These two orbit every 2.9 days and undergo the eclipses that cause Algol to vary in brightness. The third star orbits these two every 680 days and is an A or F-type main sequence star. It has been classified as an Am star, but this is now considered doubtful.[5][29]

Studies of Algol led to the

subgiant star at a later evolutionary stage. The paradox can be solved by mass transfer: when the more massive star became a subgiant, it filled its Roche lobe, and most of the mass was transferred to the other star, which is still in the main sequence. In some binaries similar to Algol, a gas flow can be seen.[30] The gas flow between the primary and secondary stars in Algol has been imaged using Doppler Tomography.[31][32]

This system also exhibits x-ray and radio wave[33] flares. The x-ray flares are thought to be caused by the magnetic fields of the A and B components interacting with the mass transfer.[34] The radio-wave flares might be created by magnetic cycles similar to those of sunspots, but because the magnetic fields of these stars are up to ten times stronger than the field of the Sun, these radio flares are more powerful and more persistent.[35][36] The secondary component was identified as the radio emitting source in Algol using Very-long-baseline interferometry by Lestrade and co-authors.[4]

Magnetic activity cycles in the chromospherically active secondary component induce changes in its radius of gyration that have been linked to recurrent orbital period variations on the order of ΔP/P ≈ 10−5 via the Applegate mechanism.[37] Mass transfer between the components is small in the Algol system[38] but could be a significant source of period change in other Algol-type binaries.

Algol is about 92.8 light-years from the Sun, but about 7.3 million years ago it passed within 9.8 light-years of the Solar System[39] and its apparent magnitude was about −2.5, which is considerably brighter than the star Sirius is today. Because the total mass of the Algol system is about 5.8 solar masses, at the closest approach this might have given enough gravity to perturb the Oort cloud of the Solar System somewhat and hence increase the number of comets entering the inner Solar System. However, the actual increase in net cometary collisions is thought to have been quite small.[40]

Names

Algol is a bright star in the constellation of Perseus (upper right).

Beta Persei is the star's Bayer designation.

The official name Algol

The name Algol derives from

Arabic رأس الغول raʾs al-ghūl : head (raʾs) of the ogre (al-ghūl) (see "ghoul").[41] The English name Demon Star was taken from the Arabic name.[42] In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN)[43] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016[44] included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN; which included Algol for this star. It is so entered on the IAU Catalog of Star Names.[45]

Ghost and demon star

Algol was called Rōsh ha Sāṭān or "Satan's Head" in Hebrew folklore, as stated by Edmund Chilmead, who called it "Divels head" or Rosch hassatan. A Latin name for Algol from the 16th century was Caput Larvae or "the Spectre's Head".[42] Hipparchus and Pliny made this a separate, though connected, constellation.[42]

First star of Medusa's head

Earlier the name of the constellation Perseus was Perseus and Medusa's Head where an asterism representing the head of Medusa after Perseus has cut it off already known in ancient Rome.

gorgon so the star is also called Gorgonea Prima meaning the first star of the gorgon.[42]

Chinese names

In

Chinese name for β Persei itself is 大陵五 (Dà Líng wu, English: The Fifth Star of Mausoleum.).[47] According to R.H. Allen the star bore the grim name of Tseih She 積屍 (Zhi Shī), meaning "Piled up Corpses"[42] but this appears to be a misidentification, and Dié Shī is correctly π Persei, which is inside the Mausoleum.[48]

Cultural significance

See also: Algol in astrology
The constellation Perseus and Algol, the Bright Star in the Gorgon's head
Johannes Hevelius, Uranographia, 1690
Johannes Hevelius, Uranographia, 1690

Historically, the star has received a strong association with bloody violence across a wide variety of cultures. In the

Gorgon Medusa.[49] In the astrology of fixed stars, Algol is considered one of the unluckiest stars in the sky,[42] and was listed as one of the 15 Behenian stars.[50]

See also

References

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  11. ^ "Algol". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  12. ^ "Beta Persei (Algol)". AAVSO. January 1999. Archived from the original on 8 July 2006. Retrieved 31 July 2006.
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  18. ^ "Ian Ridpath's Star Tales – Perseus".
  19. ^ G. Montanari, "Sopra la sparizione d'alcune stelle et altre novità celesti", in: Prose de Signori Accademici Gelati di Bologna (Bologna: Manolessi, 1671), pp. 369–92 (Google books).
  20. ^ ADS O.J. Eggen,"An Eighteenth Century Discussion of Algol", The Observatory, 77 (1957), 191–197.
  21. doi:10.1098/rstl.1783.0027
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  22. ^ "John Goodricke, The Discovery of the Occultating Variable Stars". 6 August 2003. Archived from the original on 22 June 2006. Retrieved 31 July 2006.
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  26. ^ Meltzer, Alan S., A "Spectroscopic Investigation of Algol". Astrophysical Journal, vol. 125, (1957), p.359, BibCode:1957ApJ...125..359M
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  29. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/200810788
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  34. doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.1998.01539.x
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  35. ^ Blue, Charles E. (3 June 2002). "Binary Stars "Flare" With Predictable Cycles, Analysis of Radio Observations Reveals". National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Archived from the original on 2 July 2006. Retrieved 31 July 2006.
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  40. S2CID 122929693
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  41. ^ P. Kunitzsch & T. Smart, Short Guide to Modern Star Names and Their Derivations (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), p 49.
  42. ^
    ISBN 978-0-486-21079-7
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  43. ^ "IAU Working Group on Star Names (WGSN)". Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  44. ^ "Bulletin of the IAU Working Group on Star Names, No. 1" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  45. ^ "IAU Catalog of Star Names". Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  46. ^ "Marcus Vitruvius Pollio: de Architectura, Book IX". Retrieved 8 October 2023.
  47. ^ (in Chinese) AEEA (Activities of Exhibition and Education in Astronomy) 天文教育資訊網2006年7月11日 Archived 2012-02-04 at the Wayback Machine
  48. ^ "Ian Ridpath's Star Tales – Perseus".
  49. ISBN 0-674-99479-5
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  50. ^ Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1898). Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Lyons, 1531/33. Llewellyn reprint, 1993; tr. J. Freake (1651), ed. D. Tyson, p.411.

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Algol".
  • "Algol 3". SolStation. Retrieved 31 July 2006.
  • "4C02517". ARICNS. 4 March 1998. Archived from the original on 10 February 2006. Retrieved 31 July 2006.
  • "Algol". Alcyone ephemeris. Retrieved 8 June 2006.
  • Bezza, Giuseppe. "Al-ghûl, the ogre". Translated by Daria Dudziak. Cielo e Terra. Archived from the original on 20 June 2006. Retrieved 8 June 2006.


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