M
Malenfant
Guest
After much digging around, it seems that the Spica system may be able to hold onto some planets after all.
From what I've uncovered, Spica (Alpha Virginis, arabic name "Azimech") is a rather complex system. It consists of:
- A B1 V/B4 V Close Binary pair with a separation of 0.12 AU.
- a B5 V star orbiting the pair at 4 AU
- a B7 V star orbiting others at 40 AU
- a distant K V star presumably orbiting (?) all of the above at about 10,000 AU.
The B V quadruple system is ridiculously off-limits
, but the K V system may well have planets - it's likely that it would be a captured star, which means it's probably much older than the B V stars (which are only a few million years old, tops). It's also out of range of the nasty X-ray radiation that the B V stars emit.
So there's a definite possibility that the K V star (we'll say it's a K5 V) can have a planetary system with a habitable world around it!
It's a bit of a twist, since the planet wouldn't actually be orbiting any of the stars that we're familiar with as "Spica", but hey, if it works it works
.
The view would be rathre pretty from such a world - the close binary pair would appear as single very bright star at magnitude -15 nearly 10 times brighter than the full moon and easily visible in daylight, the middle B5 V companion would poke out from the inner pair about once a year as a separate star at magnitude -13, and the outer B7 V companion would be a separate star that would get as far as about half the diameter of the full moon from the others at magnitude -12.
(thanks to Grant Hutchison on the Celestia boards for that info
)
From what I've uncovered, Spica (Alpha Virginis, arabic name "Azimech") is a rather complex system. It consists of:
- A B1 V/B4 V Close Binary pair with a separation of 0.12 AU.
- a B5 V star orbiting the pair at 4 AU
- a B7 V star orbiting others at 40 AU
- a distant K V star presumably orbiting (?) all of the above at about 10,000 AU.
The B V quadruple system is ridiculously off-limits

So there's a definite possibility that the K V star (we'll say it's a K5 V) can have a planetary system with a habitable world around it!
It's a bit of a twist, since the planet wouldn't actually be orbiting any of the stars that we're familiar with as "Spica", but hey, if it works it works

The view would be rathre pretty from such a world - the close binary pair would appear as single very bright star at magnitude -15 nearly 10 times brighter than the full moon and easily visible in daylight, the middle B5 V companion would poke out from the inner pair about once a year as a separate star at magnitude -13, and the outer B7 V companion would be a separate star that would get as far as about half the diameter of the full moon from the others at magnitude -12.
(thanks to Grant Hutchison on the Celestia boards for that info
