The 40 Eridani reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

40 Eridani

40 Eridani or Keid or Omicron 2 Eridani is a triple star system less than 16.5 light years away from Earth. It is in constellation Eridanus. It was discovered to be a double star in 1783 by William Herschel, and in 1851 it was discovered that one of the stars in the double was itself a double, by Otto Wilhem von Struve.

The primary star is an orange main sequence dwarf of spectral type K1, observed to be about 4 billion years old. The two companion stars, 40 Eridani B, a 9th magnitude white dwarf (spectral type A VII) and 40 Eridani C an 11th magnitude red dwarf (spectral type M4e V), orbit each other 400 astronomical units from the primary star.

Some fans of the Star Trek TV series have come to imagine this system as the location of the fictional planet Vulcan.

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