HD 44594 / HR 2290

The star was first designated as CD-48 2259 in a visual survey of southern stars begun in 1892 at the Astronomical Observatory of Cordoba in Argentina under the direction of its second director John M. Thome (1843-1908). Thome died before the completion of this southern sky atlas in 1914, when 578,802 stars from declination -22° to -90° were published as the Cordoba Durchmusterung ("Survey"). The "CD" is an extension of an older catalogue by Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander (1799-1875) in 1863 on the position and brightness of 324,198 stars between +90° and -2° declination that were measured over 11 years from Bonn, Germany, made with his assistants Eduard Schönfeld (1828-1891) and Aldalbert Krüger (1832-1896), which became famous as the Bonner Durchmusterung ("Bonn Survey") abbreviated as BD. The BD and CD were greatly expanded and extended into the modern age of photographic surveys with the subsequent creation of the Cape Photographic Durchmusterung from South Africa.

Today, many astronomers refer to this star as HD 44594, as designated in the Henry Draper (1837-82) Catalogue with extension (HDE), a massive photographic stellar spectrum survey carried out by Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) and Edward Charles Pickering (1846-1919) from 1911 to 1915 under the sponsorship of a memorial fund created by Henry's wife, Anna Mary Palmer. As a relatively bright star in Earth's night sky, HD 44594 is also catalogued as Harvard Revised (HR) 2290, a numbering system derived from the 1908 Revised Harvard Photometry catalogue of stars visible to many Humans with the naked eye. The HR system has been preserved through its successor, the Yale Bright Star Catalogue -- revised and expanded through the hard work of E. Dorrit Hoffleit and others. (More discussion on star names and catalogue numbers is available from Alan MacRobert at Sky and Telescope and from Professor James B. Kaler's Star Names.)

The Star

HD 44594 is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type G3-4 V. Similar to Sol (Giusa Cayrel de Strobel, 1996; Cayrel de Strobel and Bentolila, 1989; Hardorp et al, 1982; and Cayrel de Strobel, 1981), this possible "Solar twin" may have roughly the same mass, the same diameter (Pasinetti-Fracassini et al, 2001; and Wesselink et al, 1972), and 1.25 times its luminosity. It appears to be almost 1.55 times as enriched than Sol in elements heavier than hydrogen ("metals") based on its abundance of iron (B.J. Taylor, 2003). With low chromospheric activity, the star appears to be much older than Sol's 4.6 billion years (Guinan et al, 1999; and Fernley et al, 1996). The European Space Agency has used ultraviolet spectral flux distribution data to determine effective temperatures and surface gravities of stellar atmospheres, including those of HD 44594. Useful catalogue numbers and designations for the star include: HR 2290, Hip 30104, HD 44594, CD-48 2259, CP(D)-48 833, SAO 217861, FK5 2486, and LTT 2525.

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