HD 83446

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HD 83446 is a likely astrometric binary star in the southern constellation Vela. It’s bright enough to see with the naked eye at magnitude 4.34 and sits about 107 light-years away, moving away from us at roughly 18 km/s.

The visible star is an A-type main-sequence star (class A7 V), about 1.8 times the Sun’s mass, with a surface temperature around 8,331 K and luminosity about 16 times that of the Sun. It spins very fast (projected rotational velocity ~155 km/s), which makes the star slightly oblate with an equatorial bulge about 6% larger than the poles.

HD 83446 is also a Delta Scuti variable, pulsating at two frequencies near 31 and 34 cycles per day, corresponding to periods of about 46 and 42 minutes. The system is roughly 453 million years old. It has several catalog names, including Vel, FK5 2768, HIP 47175, HR 3836, and SAO 221344.