Alnitak is a triple star system in the constellation of Orion. It has the designations ζ Orionis, which is Latinised to Zeta Orionis and abbreviated Zeta Ori or ζ Ori, and 50 Orionis, abbreviated 50 Ori. The system is located at a distance of several hundred parsecs from the Sun and is one of the three main stars of Orion's Belt along with Alnilam and Mintaka.
The primary star, Alnitak Aa, is a hot blue supergiant with an absolute magnitude of −6.0 and is the brightest class O star in the night sky with a visual magnitude of +2.0. It has two companions—Ab and B, the latter known for the longest time and the former discovered recently, producing a combined magnitude for the trio of +1.77. The stars are members of the Orion OB1 association and the Collinder 70 [de] association.
Alnitak has been known since antiquity and, as a component of Orion's Belt, has been of widespread cultural significance. It was reported to be a double star by amateur German astronomer George K. Kunowsky in 1819.[11] Much more recently, in 1998, the bright primary was found by a team from the Lowell Observatory to have a close companion; this had been suspected from observations made with the Narrabri Stellar Intensity Interferometer in the 1970s.[12]
The stellar parallax derived from observations by the Hipparcos satellite imply a distance around 225 parsecs, but this does not take into account distortions caused by the multiple nature of the system and larger distances have been derived by many authors.[4]
Stellar system
Alnitak Aa compared to the Sun (to scale)
Alnitak is a triple star system at the eastern end of Orion's Belt, the second-magnitude primary having a 4th-magnitude companion nearly 3 arcseconds distant, in an orbit taking over 1,500 years.
The part called Alnitak A is itself a close binary, comprising the stars Alnitak Aa and Alnitak Ab.
The traditional name Alnitak, alternately spelled Al Nitak or Alnitah, is taken from the Arabic النطاق an-niṭāq, "the girdle".[11] In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN)[13] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016[14] included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN; which included Alnitak for the star ζ Orionis Aa. It is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names.[15]
The three belt stars were collectively known by many names in many cultures. Arabic terms include النجاد Al Nijād 'the Belt', النسك Al Nasak 'the Line', العلقات Al Alkāt 'the Golden Grains or Nuts' and, in modern Arabic, ميزان الحق Al Mīzān al Ḥaqq 'the Scale of Justice'. In Chinese mythology they were known as The Weighing Beam.[11]
^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.
^ abDucati, J. R. (2002). "VizieR Online Data Catalog: Catalogue of Stellar Photometry in Johnson's 11-color system". CDS/ADC Collection of Electronic Catalogues. 2237: 0. Bibcode:2002yCat.2237....0D.
^Kharchenko, N.V.; Scholz, R.-D.; Piskunov, A.E.; Röser, S.; Schilbach, E. (2007). "Astrophysical supplements to the ASCC-2.5: Ia. Radial velocities of ~55000 stars and mean radial velocities of 516 Galactic open clusters and associations". Astronomische Nachrichten. 328 (9): 889–896. arXiv:0705.0878. Bibcode:2007AN....328..889K. doi:10.1002/asna.200710776. ISSN0004-6337. S2CID119323941.
^Buysschaert, B.; Neiner, C.; Ramiaramanantsoa, T.; Richardson, N. D.; David-Uraz, A.; Moffat, A. F. J. (2016). "Understanding the photometric variability of ζ OriAa". Second Brite-Constellation Science Conference: Small Satellites – Big Science. 5: 101. arXiv:1610.05625. Bibcode:2017sbcs.conf..101B.
