Iota Orionis is the brightest star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

 in Orion's sword

Orion's Sword

The Orion's Sword is an astronomical asterism in the constellation Orion. It comprises three stars under the prominent asterism, Orion's Belt. M42, the Orion Nebula is located in the center...

, and is located at the tip of the sword. It has the traditional names Hatsya (sometimes with the typographic error Hatysa), or in Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

, Na’ir al Saif, which means simply "the Bright One of the Sword."+-9*

Iota Orionis is a quadruple system dominated by a massive spectroscopic binary with an eccentric (e=0.764), 29-day orbit. The binary is composed of a class O9 III star (blue giant

Blue giant

In astronomy, a blue giant is a star with a spectral type of O or B and a luminosity class of III...

) and a class B1 III star. The collision of the stellar wind

Stellar wind

A stellar wind is a flow of neutral or charged gas ejected from the upper atmosphere of a star. It is distinguished from the bipolar outflows characteristic of young stars by being less collimated, although stellar winds are not generally spherically symmetric.Different types of stars have...

s from this pair makes the system a strong X-ray

X-ray

X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...

source.

External links

• Iota Orionis by Dr. Jim Kaler.
• David Darling's encyclopedia entry