V1400 Centauri, also known as 1SWASP J140747.93−394542.6 or simply J1407, is a young, 20-million-year-old pre-main-sequence star that underwent a series of extreme dimming events in April–June 2007. These dimming events, which never appeared again, were thought to have been caused by an eclipse of a disked object known as J1407b. The star is about as massive as the Sun and is located in the constellation Centaurus at a distance of 451 light-years away. V1400 Centauri is a member of Upper Centaurus–Lupus subgroup of the Scorpius–Centaurus association, a group of young, comoving stars close to the Sun.
Name and catalogue history The star has been catalogued in as early as the 1990s by the Hubble Guide Star Catalog, which identified the star and measured its position in a pair of photographic plates taken in 1974 and 1979. The star has been catalogued by other sky surveys, including the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS), Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), Super Wide Angle Search for Planets (1SWASP), and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Typically in these catalogues, the star is given designations such as 1SWASP J140747.93–394542.6, which comprises the survey name followed by the star's location in equatorial coordinates. As such designations can be unwieldy, researchers simply call the star "J1407". The star was given the official variable star designation V1400 Centauri in 2015, when it was added to the International Astronomical Union's General Catalogue of Variable Stars. A 2018 research paper on stars with unusual dimming periods nicknamed V1400 Centauri "Mamajek's Object", after the astronomer Eric Mamajek who identified the star's unusual dimming in 2007.
Stellar properties
Location and age
V1400 Centauri is located in the constellation Centaurus, about 40 degrees south of the celestial equator. The most recent parallax measurements by the Gaia spacecraft indicate V1400 Centauri is located 450.8 ± 0.9 light-years (138.2 ± 0.3 parsecs) from the Sun. Observations of V1400 Centauri's position over time have shown that it has a southwestward proper motion consistent with that of the Scorpius–Centaurus association, an OB association of young stars with ages between 11–17 million years and distances between 380–470 ly (118–145 pc) from the Sun. The Scorpius–Centaurus association is the nearest OB association to the Sun, and is believed to have formed out of a molecular cloud that has since been blown away by the stellar winds of the association's most massive stars. V1400 Centauri is closest to the Upper Centaurus–Lupus subgroup of the Scorpius–Centaurus association, which has an age range of 14–18 million years and distance range of 380–460 ly (115–141 pc). Given V1400 Centauri's similar distance and proper motion, it very likely belongs to the Scorpius–Centaurus association, which would mean it must be a young star within the age range of the Upper Centaurus–Lupus subgroup. A 2012 estimate of V1400 Centauri's age assumes it is equal to 16 million years, the mean age of the Upper Centaurus–Lupus subgroup, while a 2018 estimate from Gaia measurements puts the star's age at 21.4+4.3−7.6 million years.
Spectral type and physical characteristics V1400 Centauri is a pre-main sequence star of spectral class K5 IVe Li. "K" means V1400 Centauri is an orange K-type star, and the adjoining number "5" ranks V1400 Centauri's relative temperature on a scale of 9 (coolest) to 0 (hottest) for K-type stars. V1400 Centauri is given the subgiant luminosity class "IV", because it has a brighter luminosity than K-type main-sequence stars (luminosity class V). The letter "e" indicates V1400 Centauri exhibits weak hydrogen-alpha emission lines in its visible light spectrum. Lastly, "Li" indicates V1400 Centauri is abundant in lithium. Measurements from the Gaia spacecraft's third and most recent data release (Gaia DR3) indicate V1400 Centauri is about 7% larger than the Sun in radius (1.07 R☉; 740,000 km; 460,000 mi), but is slightly less massive than the Sun. Depending on whether magnetic effects are taken into account in V1400 Centauri's stellar evolution or not, the star's mass could be either 0.98 M☉ or 0.89 M☉, respectively. Young stars tend to be magnetically active, and neglecting their magnetic effects results in an underestimation of their mass. An older estimate of V1400 Centauri's mass from Gaia's second data release (Gaia DR2) in 2018 gives 0.95 M☉, but does not take magnetic effects into account. V1400 Centauri is cooler and less luminous than the Sun, with an effective temperature of about 4,300 K (4,030 °C; 7,280 °F) and a luminosity about 34% that of the Sun. V1400 Centauri has an estimated surface gravity of about 200 m/s2 (over 20 times the gravity of Earth), based on Gaia measurements of the star's brightness, distance, and color. Gaia measurements also indicate V1400 Centauri has a lower metallicity than the Sun. Viewed from Earth, V1400 Centauri appears marginally redder than a typical K5-type star due to light extinction by interstellar dust between Earth and the star. The star does not exhibit excess thermal emission in near- and mid-infrared wavelengths and lacks strong emission lines in its spectrum, which indicates it lacks a substantial accretion disk or protoplanetary disk.
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