Along their respective orbits around the Milky Way, Beta Aurigae and the Sun are closing in on each other, so that in around one million years it will become the brightest star in the night sky.[14]
β Aurigae is the star system's Bayer designation. The traditional name Menkalinan is derived from the Arabic منكب ذي العنانmankib ðī-l-‘inān "shoulder of the rein-holder". In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN)[15] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016[16] included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN; which included Menkalinan for this star.
A light curve for Beta Aurigae, plotted from data published by Southworth et al. (2007)[4]
Beta Aurigae is a binary star system, but it appears as a single star in the night sky. The two stars are metallic-linedsubgiant stars belonging to the A-typestellar classification;[4] they have roughly the same mass and radius. A-type entities are hot stars that release a blue-white hued light; these two stars burn brighter and with more heat than the Sun, which is a G2-type main sequence star. The pair constitute an eclipsingspectroscopic binary; the combined apparent magnitude varies over a period of 3.96 days between +1.89 and +1.94, as every 47.5 hours one of the stars partially eclipses the other from Earth's perspective.[17] The two stars are designated Aa and Ab in modern catalogues,[18][3] but have also been referred to as components 1 and 2 or A and B.[7][9]
There is an 11th magnitude optical companion with a separation of 187″ as of 2011, but increasing. It is also an A-class subgiant, but is an unrelated background star.[18]
At an angular separation of 13.9±0.3 arcseconds along a position angle of 155° is a companion star that is 8.5 magnitudes fainter than the primary. It may be the source of the X-ray emission from the vicinity.[19] The Beta Aurigae system is believed to be a stream member of the Ursa Major Moving Group.[20]
^ abcdefghPiccotti, Luca; Docobo, José Ángel; Carini, Roberta; Tamazian, Vakhtang S.; Brocato, Enzo; Andrade, Manuel; Campo, Pedro P. (2020-02-01), "A study of the physical properties of SB2s with both the visual and spectroscopic orbits", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 492 (2): 2709–2721, Bibcode:2020MNRAS.492.2709P, doi:10.1093/mnras/stz3616, ISSN0035-8711Menkalinan's database entry at VizieR.
^ abcJohnson, H. L.; et al. (1966), "UBVRIJKL photometry of the bright stars", Communications of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, 4 (99): 99, Bibcode:1966CoLPL...4...99J
^ abcNordstrom, B.; Johansen, K. T. (1994), "Radii and masses for beta Aurigae", Astronomy and Astrophysics, 291 (3): 777–785, Bibcode:1994A&A...291..777N
^Kunitzsch, Paul; Smart, Tim (2006). A Dictionary of Modern star Names: A Short Guide to 254 Star Names and Their Derivations (2nd rev. ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Sky Pub. ISBN978-1-931559-44-7.
^ abMason, Brian D.; et al. (December 2001), "The 2001 US Naval Observatory Double Star CD-ROM. I. The Washington Double Star Catalog", The Astronomical Journal, 122 (6): 3466–3471, Bibcode:2001AJ....122.3466M, doi:10.1086/323920
^Giannuzzi, M. A. (August 1979), "On the eclipsing binaries of the Ursa Major stream", Astronomy and Astrophysics, 77 (1–2): 214–222, Bibcode:1979A&A....77..214G
