COMMISSION 27 OF THE I. A. U.
           INFORMATION BULLETIN ON VARIABLE STARS
                       Number 2414

                                         Konkoly Observatory
                                         Budapest
                                         17 October 1983

                                         HU ISSN 0374-0676
                       


              THE ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE OF AZ CANCRI


   AZ Cancri was listed as a flare star by Haro and Chavira (1966); it (T4)
had been discovered in 1964 in their search of the Praesepe region. They found
it to flare by some 2.5 mag. in the U band, and assigned it a photographic
magnitude of 18.9. Later observations have been made by Jankovics (1973) and
Jankovics, Tsvetkova, and Tsvetkov (1978), the latter reporting a flare of
over six magnitudes in U. During literature searches for variable stars among
the objects whose trigonometric parallaxes have been determined subsequent to
the appearance of Miss Jenkins' 1963 supplement, the writers independently
noted the close similarity in position of this star, which is contained in
the first supplement to the 3rd edition of the GCVS, and a faint high-proper-
motion star (LP 425-140=LHS 2034:mu=0.908"/yr) discovered in 1963 by Luyten, 
and for which he later determined (Luyten 1965) a parallax of 0.139" +-
0.032" (m.e.) from Palomar plates. Reference to the Luyten-Albers atlas of 
identification charts for the LHS stars and to a photograph of the field 
published by Haro, Chavira, and Gonzalez (1976) leaves little doubt as to the
identity of the two objects.
   Luyten now gives the star a magnitude of 18.6 pg, and with his parallax
the star would have M_pg = + 19.3, which would place it among the faintest stars
known. It is No. 316.1 in Gliese's 1969 catalogue of the nearby stars. To our
knowledge there are no available spectroscopic data.


WILLIAM P. BIDELMAN               DORRIT HOFFLEIT
Warner & Swasey Observatory       Department of Astronomy
Case Western Reserve University   Yale University
Cleveland, Ohio 44106             New Haven, Conn. 06511


References:

Haro, G., and Chavira, E., 1966, Vistas in Astr. 8, 89. [BIBCODE 1966VA......8...89H ]
Haro, G., Chavira, E., and Gonzalez, G., 1976, Bol. Inst. Tonantzintla 2, 95. [BIBCODE 1976BITon...2...95H ]
Jankovics, I., 1973, I.B.V.S. No. 839.
Jankovics, I., Tsvetkova, K.P., and Tsvetkov, M.K., 1978, I.B.V.S. No. 1454.
Luyten, W. J., 1965, Publ. Univ. Minn. 3, No. 16. [BIBCODE 1965POMin..16....1L ]