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  • Type of Tau Ceti and Toliman

    From Jos Bergervoet@21:1/5 to All on Sat Feb 20 13:20:27 2021
    Why is Tau Ceti a G-type star and Toliman (Alpha Cen B) a K-type?

    In terms of mass, Tau Ceti is actually the lighter one (78% of the
    Sun's mass vs. 90% for Toliman.) So you'd expect the opposite..

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Ceti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri#Alpha_Centauri_B

    --
    Jos

    [[Mod. note -- One plausible reason is that stars change in spectral
    type as they age. Wikipedia gives Tau Ceti's age as 5.8 Gyr, Alpha Cen B
    as 5.3 Gyr. The two stars also have somewhat different metallicities
    (which affect spectral types).
    -- jt]]

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  • From Phillip Helbig (undress to reply@21:1/5 to jos.bergervoet@xs4all.nl on Sat Feb 20 15:45:00 2021
    In article <6030c9f9$0$27912$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>, Jos Bergervoet <jos.bergervoet@xs4all.nl> writes:

    Why is Tau Ceti a G-type star and Toliman (Alpha Cen B) a K-type?

    In terms of mass, Tau Ceti is actually the lighter one (78% of the
    Sun's mass vs. 90% for Toliman.) So you'd expect the opposite..

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Ceti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri#Alpha_Centauri_B

    Note that Tau Ceti is G8, while the Sun is G2. After G comes K, so the difference between G8 and K isn't that large. There are different metallicities, and also Tau Ceti is a single star, so there is a
    different history.

    In this case, both are main-sequence stars. However, the spectral type
    itself says little about the mass; red giants and red dwarfs, for
    example, can have the same spectral class (but different luminosity
    classes).

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