CoRoT was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly those of large terrestrial size, and to perform asteroseismology by measuring solar-like oscillations in stars. The mission was led by the French Space Agency (CNES) in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other international partners.
R Doradus is a red giant variable star in the far-southern constellation Dorado. Its distance from Earth is 178 light-years. Having a uniform disk diameter of 57±5 mas, it is thought to be the extrasolar star with the largest apparent size as viewed from Earth.
The Red Rectangle Nebula, so called because of its red color and unique rectangular shape, is a protoplanetary nebula in the Monoceros constellation. Also known as HD 44179, the nebula was discovered in 1973 during a rocket flight associated with the AFCRL Infrared Sky Survey called Hi Star. The binary system at the center of the nebula was first discovered by Robert Grant Aitken in 1915.
A Centauri is a single star in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It is blue-white in hue and is faintly visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of +4.62. The star is located at a distance of approximately 430 light-years from the Sun based on stellar parallax. It appears to be drifting further away with a radial velocity of around +6 km/s.
Z Andromedae is a binary star system consisting of a red giant and a white dwarf. It is the prototype of a type of cataclysmic variable star known as symbiotic variable stars or simply Z Andromedae variables. The brightness of those stars vary over time, showing a quiescent, more stable phase and then an active one with a more pronounced variability and stronger brightening and/or dimming.
R Andromedae is a Mira-type variable star in the constellation Andromeda. Its spectral class is type S because it shows absorption bands of zirconium monoxide (ZrO) in its spectrum. It was among the stars found by Paul Merrill to show absorption lines of the unstable element technetium, establishing that nucleosynthesis must be occurring in stars. The SH molecule was found for the first time outside earth in the atmosphere of this star. The star is losing mass due to stellar winds at a rate of 1.09×10−6M☉/yr.
V Aquilae is a carbon star and semiregular variable star in the constellation Aquila. It has an apparent magnitude which varies between 6.6 and 8.4 and is located around 400 parsecs (1,300 ly) away.
HD 100546, also known as KR Muscae, is a pre-main sequence star of spectral type B8 to A0 located 353 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Musca. The star is surrounded by a circumstellar disk from a distance of 0.2 to 4 AU, and again from 13 AU out to a few hundred AU, with evidence for a protoplanet forming at a distance of around 47 AU.
T Cephei is a Mira variable star in the constellation Cepheus. Located approximately 600 light-years distant, it varies between magnitudes 5.2 and 11.3 over a period of around 388 days.
A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius large and the surface temperature around 5,000 K or lower. The appearance of the red giant is from yellow-white to reddish-orange, including the spectral types K and M, sometimes G, but also class S stars and most carbon stars.
RU Lupi is a star in the constellation of Lupus, located in the young Lupus Star Forming Region. Based on parallax measurements, the distance to this star is about 514 light-years (158 pc). The apparent visual magnitude is 10.5, so viewing it would require a telescope with an aperture of 6 cm (2 in), but preferably larger.
An exocomet, or extrasolar comet, is a comet outside the Solar System, which includes rogue comets and comets that orbit stars other than the Sun. The first exocomets were detected in 1987 around Beta Pictoris, a very young A-type main-sequence star. There are now a total of 27 stars around which exocomets have been observed or suspected.
HD 146624 is a single, white-hued star in the southern zodiac constellation of Scorpius. It is faintly visible to the naked eye, having an apparent visual magnitude of 4.80. The distance to HD 146624 can be estimated from its annual parallax shift of 23.0 mas, yielding a separation of 142 light years. At that distance, the visual magnitude is reduced by an extinction of 0.17 due to interstellar dust. It is a member of the Beta Pictoris moving group, a set of ~12 million year old stars that share a common motion through space.
HD 143346 is a single star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Apus. It is 28.5 minutes west and about 5° north of the yellow giant star Gamma Apodis, which is the second brightest star in the constellation of Apus.
W Aquilae is a variable star in the constellation of Aquila. It is a type of evolved star known as an S-type star. Due to its relatively close distance of 1,200 light-years and equatorial location, it is easy to observe and heavily studied.
S Cassiopeiae is a Mira variable and S-type star in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is an unusually cool star, rapidly losing mass and surrounded by dense gas and dust producing masers.
II Lupi is a Mira variable and carbon star located in the constellation Lupus. It is the brightest carbon star in the southern hemisphere at 12 μm.
A post-common envelope binary (PCEB) or pre-cataclysmic variable is a binary system consisting of a white dwarf or hot subdwarf and a main-sequence star or a brown dwarf. The star or brown dwarf shared a common envelope with the white dwarf progenitor in the red giant phase. In this scenario the star or brown dwarf loses angular momentum as it orbits within the envelope, eventually leaving a main-sequence star and white dwarf in a short-period orbit. A PCEB will continue to lose angular momentum via magnetic braking and gravitational waves and will eventually begin mass-transfer, resulting in a cataclysmic variable. While there are thousands of PCEBs known, there are only a few eclipsing PCEBs, also called ePCEBs. Even more rare are PCEBs with a brown dwarf as the secondary. A brown dwarf with a mass lower than 20 MJ might evaporate during the common envelope phase and therefore the secondary is supposed to have a mass higher than 20 MJ.
HD 49268 is a solitary star in the southern circumpolar constellation Volans. It has an apparent magnitude of +6.49, placing it near the limit of naked eye visibility. Parallax measurements place the object at a distance of 456 light years; it is receding with a heliocentric radial velocity of 20.6 km/s.
R Crateris is a star about 700 light years from the Earth in the constellation Crater. It is a semiregular variable star, ranging in brightness from magnitude 8.1 to 9.5 over a period of about 160 days. It is not visible to the naked-eye, but can be seen with a small telescope, or binoculars. R Crateris is a double star; the variable star and its magnitude 9.9 F8V companion are separated by 65.4 arcseconds.
