M40
a chance pair of stars · Winnecke 4 · in Ursa Major
470 and 1,010 light-years away
Messier went looking here in 1764 for a nebula that Johannes Hevelius had listed nearby, and found only two faint stars, which he listed anyway. They are not a real pair: Gaia shows the brighter one is twice as far away, and since 1863 they have drifted from 49 to 53 arcseconds apart on our sky.
- its two stars: about 470 and 1,010 light-years away (Gaia)
- the nearer one has a white dwarf of its own, at least 720 AU from it
- kind
- star
- catalogue
- M40
- size
- 538 light-years across
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- M73 four stars by chance
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