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What Type of Stars Are in the Constellation Cancer?

Cancer the Crab to the naked-eye observer is a hodgepodge of faint stars in which most people have a hard time discerning the shape of a heavenly crab. To those with telescopes and a background in astronomy, the stars within this region of the night sky are much more interesting.

Al Tarf
- Al Tarf is Cancer's brightest star, but is still so faint from Earth that it takes a moonless night to see it with ease. However, in reality Al Tarf is what astronomers call an orange giant, a star that attains great size while in the process of "dying."
Praesepe
- Cancer is famous with sky observers for an open cluster called the Praesepe, a grouping of some 300 stars that includes a variety of stars at different stages of their evolution.
White Dwarf
- Eleven white dwarf stars, defined by astronomers as stars that collapse down to a much smaller size than their original form after billions of years, exist within the Praesepe star cluster, according to the Universe Today website.
M67
- Within Cancer's borders is a galaxy categorized as Messier Object 67. This faraway collection of stars contains at least 100 that are quite similar to our own Sun.
Significance
- The visible star Delta Cancri is an orange giant that lies 136 light years from Earth and has a Latin name that can be translated as the "Southern ass." It lies just to the south of Gamma Cancri, a white star called the "Northern ass" by the ancients; in between is the Praesepe cluster.

Astronomy