Epsilon Indi


Epsilon Indi

(Ɛ Ind) An orange-red main-sequence dwarf star in the constellation Indus that is a near neighbor of the Sun, lying at a distance of almost 3.62 parsecs. It is about 1.3 billion years old and is smaller and much dimmer than the Sun, having a surface temperature of about 4300 K. In 2003, a team of astronomers announced the detection of a brown dwarf possibly with a methane atmosphere circling Epsilon Indi at a separation of 1500 AU. The brown dwarf, now known as Epsilon Indi ba, is thought to have the same diameter as Jupiter but nearly 50 times its mass. Epsilon Indi ba is itself orbited by a brown dwarf, named Epsilon Indi bb. The Epsilon Indi system has a very large proper motion (about 4.7 seconds of arc per year) and over the next few thousand years will move out of Indus into the neighboring constellation Tucana. mv : 4.68; Mv : 6.89; spectral type: K5 Ve.