5 Ursae Minoris

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5 Ursae Minoris is a star in Ursa Minor, the northern circumpolar constellation. It’s visible to the naked eye with an apparent magnitude of about 4.25. The star lies roughly 359 light-years away (about 110 parsecs) and is moving away from us at about 9 km/s.

Physically, it is an evolved red giant of spectral type K4-III. It has expanded to about 16 times the Sun’s radius and shines with around 447 times the Sun’s luminosity. Its surface temperature is about 4,100 K. The star’s mass is roughly 1.9 solar masses, and its age is around 2 billion years. Its chemical makeup has slightly less heavy elements than the Sun ([Fe/H] ≈ -0.16).

5 Ursae Minoris is a mild barium star, which may mean it has a white-dwarf companion in a binary system. It shows very little lithium and rotates slowly, at about 1.9 km/s.

Other designations include HD 127700, HIP 70692, and HR 5430. In Chinese astronomy, it is called Shuzi and is part of the Beiji (Northern Pole) asterism alongside nearby stars.