Beta Trianguli Australis

In the indigenous Australian Wardaman culture, this star has the name Jirradella, meaning "rainbow sign".

Characteristics

It is a F-type main-sequence star with a stellar classification of F1 V. It has 1.61 times the Sun's mass and 1.98 times the Sun's radius. It radiates 9.3 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 7,170 K. The abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, what astronomers term metallicity, is somewhat lower than that of the Sun.

Observation with the Spitzer Space Telescope reveals what appears to be an excess infrared emission from this star. This suggests the presence of circumstellar material in this system, making it a debris disk candidate. This star may be a member of the Beta Pictoris moving group, an association of about 17 stars that share a common origin and a similar motion through space. If it is a member of this group, this would put the age of β TrA at about 12 million years; the same as the group itself.

β TrA has a nearby visual companion, the magnitude 13.2 star LTT 6333. However, it is actually a background object, with a distance of 900 light-years. This star is part of the Antaeus moving group, which likely has an extragalactic origin.