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Epsilon Ursae Majoris (Epsilon UMa, ε Ursae Majoris, ε UMa) is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Major (despite its Bayer designation being merely "epsilon"), and at magnitude 1.76 is the thirty-first brightest star in the sky. It has the traditional name Alioth. It is the star in the tail of the bear closest to its body, and thus the star in the handle of the Big Dipper (Plough) closest to the bowl. It is also a member of the large and diffuse Ursa Major moving group. Historically, the star was frequently used in celestial navigation in the maritime trade, because it is listed as one of the 57 navigational stars. ==Peculiarities== According to ''Hipparcos'', Alioth is 81 light years (25 parsecs) from Earth. Its spectral type is A1p; the "p" stands for ''peculiar'', as the spectrum of its light is characteristic of an Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variable. Alioth, as a representative of this type, may harbor two interacting processes. First, the star's strong magnetic field separating different elements in the star's hydrogen 'fuel'. In addition, a rotation axis at an angle to the magnetic axis may be spinning different bands of magnetically sorted elements into the line of sight between Alioth and the Earth. The intervening elements react differently at different frequencies of light as they whip in and out of view, causing Alioth to have very strange spectral lines that fluctuate over a period of 5.1 days. The ''kB9'' suffix to the spectral type indicates that the calcium K line is present and representative of a B9 spectral type even though the rest of the spectrum indicates A1. With Alioth, the rotational and magnetic axes are at almost 90 degrees to one another. Darker (denser) regions of chromium form a band at right angles to the equator. A recent study suggests Alioth's 5.1-day variation may be due to a substellar object of about 14.7 Jupiter masses in an eccentric orbit (e=0.5) with an average separation of 0.055 astronomical units. Alioth has a relatively weak magnetic field, 15 times weaker than α CVn, but it is still 100 times stronger than that of the Earth. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Epsilon Ursae Majoris」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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