Alpha Reticuli

Characteristics

This star has about three times the mass of the Sun and is about 300 million years old. The spectrum of this star matches a stellar classification of G8 II-III, with the luminosity class notation 'II-III' indicating it shows some traits of both a giant star and a bright giant. At this evolutionary stage, the surface has expanded to 13 times the radius of the Sun and the outer envelope has an effective temperature of 4,800 K. X-ray emission has been detected from this star, with an estimated luminosity of 3 × 10²⁹ erg s⁻¹.

Alpha Reticuli has a 12th-magnitude visual companion, CCDM J04144-6228B, at an angular separation of 48 arcseconds away along a position angle of 355°. Since the two stars share a common proper motion across the celestial sphere, it is possible that Alpha Reticuli, rather than being solitary, may instead be the primary component of a binary star system with a projected separation of 2400 au and an orbital period of, at least, 60,000 years. They have a 94% possibility to be related.