Iota Aurigae is a star in the northern constellation of Auriga. Its name is a Bayer designation that is Latinized from ι Aurigae, abbreviated Iota Aur or ι Aur. The star has the official name Hassaleh, pronounced .[ which is bright enough to be readily visible to the naked eye. Stellar parallax measurements give a distance estimate of roughly from the Sun.][ It is drifting further away with a radial velocity of +18 km/s.][
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Nomenclature
ι Aurigae (Latinised to Iota Aurigae) is the star's Bayer designation.
It bore the traditional name Al Kab,[ short for Kabdhilinan , from the Arabic كعب ذي العنان ][ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar al-Ṣūfī. صور الكواكب الثابتة ( Book of Fixed Stars). Manuscript from the National Library of France.] "the ankle[ Translation of the Arabic word كعب to English on the Almaany dictionaries website.] of the rein holder (charioteer)".[ Under the name Alkab, this star is a marker on the astrolabe described by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Treatise on the Astrolabe in 1391.
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It bore the novel name Hassaleh in Antonín Bečvář's 1951 atlas. The origin and meaning of the name have not been discovered despite extensive search, and no connection to any language has been discovered.[ The IAU Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) has approved the proper name Hassaleh for this star.]
It is known as 五車一 (the First Star of the Five Chariots) in Chinese language.[
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Properties
At Iota Aurigae's distance, extinction from interstellar dust is causing a magnitude reduction of about 0.6.[ Examination of the stellar spectrum yields a stellar classification of K3 II–III, with the luminosity class of 'II–III' indicating this is a evolved hybrid giant star.][ Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified.][ The effective temperature of the outer envelope is 4,160 K,][ which is cooler than the Sun's effective temperature and gives Iota Aurigae the orange hue of a K-type star.][
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It is a weak X-ray emitter with an X-ray luminosity of about . This emission is most likely coming from Coronal loop in Iota Aurigae's outer atmosphere, which have a temperature of around .[ This is a suspected variable star.][
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During the Extreme Solar Systems conference held on June 25–29, 2007, in Santorini, Greece, Reffert et al. announced the detection of two substellar objects orbiting Iota Aurigae in 2:1 resonance. Such companions would be with of approximately 2 and 4 years. No minimum mass for the candidates was provided. As of 2008, the detection has not been confirmed, though Hekker et al. (2008) listed significant radial velocity variations at periods of 767 and 1586 days.[
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