86 μ Her

STARG5IV yellow subgiant

ILLUSTRATION FROM SPECTRAL TYPE G5IV · 5560 K · 2.58 L☉

[

OVERVIEW

] STAR

86 μ Her is a in the constellation Hercules, 27.11 from Earth, shining at apparent magnitude 3.42 (). It is catalogued as Gl 695A, HD 161797 and HIP 86974, among 5 designations in total.

WHAT IT IS
Yellow subgiant
HOW FAR
27.11

The light arriving now left it that long ago.

HOW BRIGHT (V)

Bright enough for the naked eye, under a sky dark enough.

WHERE TO LOOK
Hercules

The patch of sky it sits in, as seen from Earth.

[

THE MODEL

] RADIUS FROM THE LUMINOSITY AND THE TEMPERATURE
DRAG TO ORBIT

CALCULATED · NOT AN OBSERVATION · RADIUS FROM THE LUMINOSITY AND THE TEMPERATURE · SPECTRAL TYPE G5IV · 5560 K · 2.58 L☉

Drawn from the radius from the luminosity and the temperature and from the same properties the picture at the top of this page uses, at the distance a flight to it would stop. Drag it, or use the arrow keys, to look from another direction. The stars behind are the 498,631 this catalogue holds real distances for, at their real positions and drawn from where the camera actually is — so the constellations are wrong, and that is the point. This is the sky from there, not the sky from here.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see 86 μ Her for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.

TONIGHT

Say where you are, and this line says when 86 μ Her is worth going out for.

[

THROUGH AN EYEPIECE

] 150 MM TELESCOPE · 25 MM EYEPIECE
NE
13.4′ ACROSS

Bright enough to see with your eyes alone, once you are away from town lights. Its brightest companion sits 35.4″ away, which at 48× is cleanly split.

48×
1.08
1.25
13.0
· A,BC
35.4 · cleanly split
· AD
5.4 · cleanly split
· Aa,Ab
1.80 · right at the limit — a steady night and a good eye
APPARENT MAGNITUDE ()
3.42 · within reach

A is where the pair was the year it was measured — the ones above, between 2002 and 2016, and a pair in a real orbit has moved since. The brightest companion — A,BC — is 6.4 magnitudes down on the star itself, which this far out from it is a faint speck beside a bright star rather than a matched pair.

FIND IT ON THE SKY MAP ↗
[

APPARENT PLACE

] EQUINOX J2026.7

Where a telescope has to be pointed today, which is not quite where the catalogue records the object: the coordinate grid itself has turned since the year 2000 the catalogue is referred to.

RIGHT ASCENSION
DECLINATION
GRID TURNED SINCE
14.1
PROPER MOTION SINCE
21.4

Computed for 2026-08-27 00:00 UT. Two things separate it from the catalogued position above: 86 μ Her has moved under its own proper motion, and the coordinate grid has turned under it — about fifty arcseconds a year of precession since 2000, and the small nodding of the Earth’s axis on top of that. Aberration and refraction are not included, and neither is parallax; each is under an arcminute, which is also about as well as the catalogued position is known. The same figure for any date.

[

DOUBLE STAR

] 3 PAIRS
COMPONENTSSEPARATIONPOSITION ANGLEMAGNITUDEMEASURED
Aa,Ab1.8″255°12.72015
A,BC35.4″249°9.782016
AD321.1″12.332002

Separation and position angle are as measured in the year given; a position angle is measured from north, through east. Washington Double Star Catalog 17465+2743.

[

CATALOG DATA

] 8 FIELDS

The raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.

WHAT IT IS MADE OF

What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.

Spectral type
Luminosity
2.57751

HOW BRIGHT IT IS

What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.

Colour index (B−V)

WHERE IT IS AND HOW IT MOVES

Position, motion across the sky and the size it covers on it. These are measurements of the object as seen from here, so every one of them depends on where here is.

Proper motion (RA)
−291.42
Proper motion (Dec)
−750
Radial velocity
−16.7

OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS

The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.

Washington Double Star id
17465+2743

WHERE THESE FIGURES CAME FROM

Which catalogue, paper or model each of the fields above was read from, where the source named one.

Spectral type from
SIMBAD (1989ApJS...71..245K, quality B)
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 5 DESIGNATIONS
  • Bayer/Flamsteed 86 μ Her
  • Gliese Gl 695A
  • HD HD 161797
  • HIP HIP 86974
  • HR HR 6623
[

LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE

] 3 SERVICES

Each link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.

[

CITE THIS PAGE

] DR1

This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.

PLAIN TEXT
SpaceCatalog. 86 μ Her [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/hd-161797
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_hd-161797,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{86 μ Her}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/hd-161797},
  note         = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from HYG Database v4.1.}
}

The values above were taken from HYG Database v4.1 — CC-BY-SA-4.0. Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue, and its licence is share-alike: the terms reach whatever you build from these rows.

[

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