La Superba (Y CVn / Y Canum Venaticorum) is a star in the constellation Canes Venatici, well-known for its strikingly red appearance.
La Superba is a semi-regular variable star, peaking at about +4.8 mag and diminishing to around +6.3 over a 160 day cycle. Known in short form as Y CVn, it is one of the reddest stars in the sky, and it is among the brightest of the giant red "carbon stars". It is the brightest J-star in the sky, a very rare catego...
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La Superba (Y CVn / Y Canum Venaticorum) is a star in the constellation Canes Venatici, well-known for its strikingly red appearance.
La Superba is a semi-regular variable star, peaking at about +4.8 mag and diminishing to around +6.3 over a 160 day cycle. Known in short form as Y CVn, it is one of the reddest stars in the sky, and it is among the brightest of the giant red "carbon stars". It is the brightest J-star in the sky, a very rare category of carbon stars that contain large amounts of carbon-13 (carbon atoms with 7 neutrons instead of the usual 6). 19th century astronomer Angelo Secchi, impressed with its beauty, gave the star its common name.
La Superba's temperature is believed to be about 2800 K, making it one of the coldest true stars known. Y CVn is almost never visible to the naked eye since most of its output is outside the visible spectrum. Yet, when infrared radiation is considered, Y CVn has a luminosity 4400 times that of the Sun, and its radius is approximately 2...
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