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54 Aurigae

54 Aurigae is a multiple star system located around 800 light-years (51,000,000 AU) away from the Sun in the northern constellationofAuriga. It is visible to the naked eye as a dim, blue-white hued star with a combined apparent visual magnitude of 6.02.^[5] The system is moving further from the Sun with a heliocentric radial velocity of around +19 km/s.^[5]

54 Aurigae is resolved into two visible components, of magnitudes 6.22 and 7.82, separated by 0.8″. The double was discovered in 1843 when the separation was only 0.7″.^[10] There is no separate measure of the parallax of the secondary, but it shares a common proper motion with the brighter star^[11] and they are assumed to form a binary.^[10] The spectral class B7 III is assigned to the brighter of the pair, indicating a hot giant star, although it has also been given as B7/8 III/V, suggesting it may be a main sequence star.^[12] Most sources can't give a separate spectral classification for the fainter star, but it has been listed as DA1/K4V, indicating it is either a white dwarforred dwarf.^[13]

The brighter component of the visible pair is an eclipsing binary with a period of 1.8797 days, and a primary eclipse depth of 0.03 magnitudes.^[14] It is radiating 315 times the luminosity of the Sun from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 11,083 K (10,810 °C; 19,490 °F),^[7] and is spinning with a projected rotational velocity of 65 kilometres per second (40 mi/s).^[8]