Beta Centauri, also known as Hadar, is the second brightest star in the southern constellation Centaurus. It also ranks as the 11th brightest star in the night sky. While it appears as a single point of light, Beta Centauri is actually a triple star system, about 390 light-years away.
To stargazers, Beta Centauri and its brighter neighbor Alpha Centauri are known as “pointers” to the Southern Cross. They’re also prominently featured in the astronomical lore of many cultures.
Beta Centauri science.
In 1935, Dutch astronomer Joan Voûte was able to resolve Beta Centauri into two stars, using a telescope. At the time, the stars were 1.3 arc seconds apart. That separation has since narrowed due to a position angle change, requiring specialized imaging techniques to see the faint companion.
The brighter star is known as Beta Centauri A. More about it later. Its faint companion, Beta Centauri B, is a small hot 4th magnitude star, about 4.5 times the sun’s mass. The Beta Centauri A and B orbital period is thought to be a minimum of 250 years.
It’s a close binary system
In 1999, spectroscopic observations confirmed what astronomers had long suspected: Beta Centauri A is a close binary star system. The more massive star of the pair, designated as Beta Centauri Aa, is about 12 times the mass of the sun while its companion, Beta Centauri Ab is about 10.5 times the sun’s mass. They orbit about a common center of mass every 357 days, coming as close as 3 astronomical units to each other.
The Beta Centauri A stars are what’s known as B1 III stars; that’s a stellar classification code that indicates that they are bright hot blue giant stars entering the latter stages of their stellar lifetime. Such massive stars tend to be short-lived, compared to lower mass stars like the sun. These giant stars “burn” furiously, spending less time in a relatively stable state called the main sequence, where outward radiation pressure from the star’s hot interior is balanced by the inward force of the star’s gravity.
It’s likely that the Beta Centauri A stars will someday explode as supernovae, each leaving behind a dense neutron star. It won’t happen for tens of millions of years, but when it does, these supernovae are close enough that they’ll be visible during the daytime.
How to see Beta Centauri.
Alpha and Beta Centauri are the brightest stars in the large and sprawling constellation of Centaurus the Centaur. Both are near the famed Southern Cross (also called Crux), and are roughly 30 degrees from the south celestial pole. They’re sometimes called the Southern Pointer Stars because they point to the Southern Cross.
Alas, neither Alpha Centauri nor Beta Centauri can be seen at all in the U.S., except very briefly from South Texas, parts of Florida, and Hawaii.
For Northern Hemisphere observers, there really are no good pointer stars to Alpha and Beta Centauri. If you live far enough south to see them, you will need to look for them low on the southern horizon at exactly the right time. That right time might come, for example, at roughly 1 a.m. (local daylight-saving time) in early May. By early July, Beta Centauri culminates (reaches its highest point) in the south by nightfall. It also can be seen briefly in the predawn spring skies.
Meanwhile, from the Southern Hemisphere, Beta Centauri is quite prominent. It is very bright (magnitude 0.61) with a bluish color. It’s also close to Alpha Centauri, the third brightest star in the night sky.
Beta Centauri in mythology.
For the Ngarrindjeri indigenous people of South Australia, Alpha and Beta Centauri were two sharks pursuing a sting ray represented by stars of the Southern Cross. To the Boorong of northwestern Victoria, Australia, the two stars were brothers that killed Tchingal, the Emu, represented in the sky by the Coalsack Nebula.
Ancient seafaring Polynesians navigated using the stars, with cues from nature such as bird movements, waves, and wind direction. Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri, known as Kamailehope and Kamailemua, respectively, were important signposts used for orientation in the open ocean.
To the Incas, Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri were the eyes of a giant llama sprawled across the sky from Scorpius to the Southern Cross. In Africa, they were named for two men who once were lions. At one time in China they were known, according to Richard Hinckley Allen, who wrote the classic book Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, as Ma Wei, the Horse’s Tail.
More star lore
Beta Centauri’s proper name is Hadar; it apparently derives from an Arabic word for ground, possibly referring to its nearness to the horizon as seen from low latitudes. The star is sometimes known as Agena (derived from Latin words for the knee), referring to the star’s position at the left knee of the Centaur in its classical depiction.
The Centaur itself was supposed to be the son of the god Chronos and a sea nymph. Uncharacteristically wise and just, this centaur, often known as Chiron, was a favorite of Apollo and Diana and figures in some minor mythology of its own.
Beta Centauri’s position is RA:14h 03m 49s, Dec:-60° 22′ 23″.
Bottom line: Beta Centauri, also called as Hadar, is a triple star system. It is known, along with its nearby neighbor Alpha Centauri, as a pointer to the Southern Cross.
Larry Sessions
View Articles
About the Author:
Larry Sessions has written many favorite posts in EarthSky's Tonight area. He's a former planetarium director in Little Rock, Fort Worth and Denver and an adjunct faculty member at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He's a longtime member of NASA's Solar System Ambassadors program. His articles have appeared in numerous publications including Space.com, Sky & Telescope, Astronomy and Rolling Stone. His small book on world star lore, Constellations, was published by Running Press.
