Eta Piscium


Eta Piscium is a binary star and the brightest point of light in the constellation of Pisces with an apparent visual magnitude of +3.6. Based upon a measured annual parallax shift of 9.33 mas as seen from Earth, it is located roughly 350 light-years distant from the Sun in the thin disk population of the Milky Way.
The two components are designated Eta Piscium A and B.

Nomenclature

η Piscium is the system's Bayer designation. The designations of the two constituents as Eta Piscium A and B derive from the convention used by the Washington Multiplicity Catalog for multiple star systems, and adopted by the International Astronomical Union.
The system bore the traditional names Al Pherg and Kullat Nunu. At the time that the vernal equinox entered into Pisces, the system was located in the first ecliptic constellation of the Neo-Babylonians, Kullat Nūnu − 'Nūnu' being the Babylonian word for fish and 'Kullat' referring to either the bucket or the cord that holds the fish together. In 2016, the IAU organized a Working Group on Star Names to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN decided to attribute proper names to individual stars rather than entire multiple systems. It approved the name Alpherg for the component Eta Piscium A on 1 June 2018 and it is now so included in the List of IAU-approved Star Names.
In Chinese, 右更, meaning Official in Charge of the Pasturing, refers to an asterism consisting of Eta Piscium, Rho Piscium, Pi Piscium, Omicron Piscium and 104 Piscium. Consequently, the Chinese name for Eta Piscium itself is 右更二

Properties

At its present distance, the visual magnitude of the system is diminished by an extinction factor of due to interstellar dust.
This system's binary nature was discovered in 1878 by an amateur astronomer, S. W. Burnham. It has an orbital period of roughly 850 years, a semimajor axis of 1.2 arc seconds, and an eccentricity of 0.47.
The primary, component A, is an evolved, magnitude 3.83 G-type giant star with a stellar classification of G7 IIIa. It has a weak magnetic field with a strength of, and is a Gamma Cassiopeiae variable. The companion, component B, is a magnitude 7.51 star.