Facts about Mira
- 09
At maximum brightness, Mira reaches apparent magnitude 2, becoming visible to the naked eye despite being 430 light-years distant from Earth.
- 08
Spectroscopic analysis reveals that Mira's atmosphere contains water vapor and carbon monoxide, indicating the cool, carbon-rich environment characteristic of asymptotic giant branch stars.
- 07
In 1997, the ROSAT satellite detected X-ray emissions from Mira's accretion disk, providing evidence that the white dwarf companion actively accretes material stripped from the red giant's atmosphere.
- 06
Mira's mass loss rate reaches approximately 10 to 100 times greater than the Sun's solar wind, ejecting material at velocities between 5 and 10 kilometers per second into the surrounding interstellar medium.
- 05
Around 1596, David Fabricius first documented Mira's dramatic brightness variations when he observed it as a bright naked-eye star, establishing the first known discovery of a variable star.
- 04
Mira's surface temperature drops to approximately 2,000 Kelvin at minimum brightness, roughly half its maximum temperature of 3,900 Kelvin during peak luminosity.
- 03
Observations from the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007 revealed that Mira's red giant companion has ejected material creating an extended tail stretching 13 light-years across space.
- 02
Located 430 light-years away in the constellation Cetus, Mira is a binary star system where a white dwarf companion gradually strips material from its red giant primary star.
- 01
The star Mira completes one full brightness cycle every 332 days, making it the prototype for a class of pulsating red giant variables.