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GT Muscae
Variable star in the constellation Musca From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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GT Muscae, also known as 12 Muscae, is a variable star about 400 light years from the Earth, in the constellation Musca.[3] It is a 5th magnitude star, so it should be faintly visible to the naked eye of an observer far from city lights.[3] It is a quadruple star system, consisting of a spectroscopic binary containing an RS Canum Venaticorum variable (RS CVn) star (HD 101379), orbiting an eclipsing binary (HD 101380).[1] It varies in brightness from magnitude 4.96 to 5.23.[4] GT Muscae is a very active X-ray source.[10]
In 1929, Willem van den Bos discovered that GT Muscae is a visual double star, whose A (HD 101379) and B (HD 101380) components were separated by 0.2 arc seconds at the time he observed it.[9] Examining photographic plates in 1964, Wolfgang Strohmeier et al. discovered that GT Muscae is a variable star.[11] In 1979, based on spectroscopic features, Edward Weiler and Robert Stencel listed GT Muscae as a likely RS CVn variable.[12] Eclipses of the HD 101380 pair were first reported by Andrew Collier Cameron in his 1982 PhD thesis, in which he also determined that pair's orbital period.[13] The entire star system was given the variable star designation GT Muscae in 1988.[14]
Strong, variable, 5 GHz radio emission from GT Muscae, indicative of flares, was detected in 1982 and was interpreted as indicating high levels of chromospheric and coronal activity.[15]
GT Muscae was detected in the early observations of the Uhuru X-ray satellite, originally denoted as 2U 1134–161, later renamed 4U 1137–65.[16][17] Michael Garcia et al. identified HD 101379 as the source seen by Uhuru, in 1980.[18] During the 2010-2019 decade, GT Muscae showed the most X-ray flare activity of any star in the sky, producing flares with energies as high as ~1038 ergs.[10]
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