52 Hydrae
# 52 Hydrae

52 Hydrae is a triple star system in the constellation Hydra. It has the Bayer designation l Hydrae; 52 Hydrae is the Flamsteed designation. This system is visible to the naked eye as a faint, blue-white hued star with an apparent visual magnitude of 4.97. It is a probable (80% chance) member of the Sco OB2 moving group of stars, and is moving away from the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of 5 km/s.

The primary component is a binary system consisting of two nearly equal components with an orbital period of around 15 years and an angular separation of 0.1″. It shows a combined stellar classification of B7/8V, which matches a B-type main-sequence star. The third component is a magnitude 10.0 star at a separation of 4.2″ with a mass similar to the Sun. It is orbiting the inner pair with a period of around 3,900 years.

