page_title: A-type main-sequence star
section_title: Spectral standard stars
hierarchical_section_title: A-type main-sequence star / Spectral standard stars
context_page_description: An A-type main-sequence star or A dwarf star is a main-sequence star of spectral type A and luminosity class V. These stars have spectra which are defined by strong hydrogen Balmer absorption lines. They have masses from 1.4 to 2.1 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 7600 and 10,000 K. Bright and nearby examples are Altair, Sirius A, and Vega. A-type stars don't have a convective zone and thus aren't expected to harbor a magnetic dynamo. As a consequence, because they don't have strong stellar winds they lack a means to generate X-ray emission.
  In July 2019, astronomers reported finding an A-type star, S5-HVS1, traveling 1,755 km/s, faster that any other star detected so far. The star is in the Grus constellation in the southern sky, and about 29,000 light-years from Earth, and may have been ejected out of the Milky Way galaxy after interacting with Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.
context_section_description: The revised Yerkes Atlas system listed a dense grid of A-type dwarf spectral standard stars, but not all of these have survived to this day as standards. The "anchor points" and "dagger standards" of the MK spectral classification system among the A-type main-sequence dwarf stars, i.e. those standard stars that have remain unchanged over years and can be considered to define the system, are Vega (A0 V), Gamma Ursae Majoris (A0 V), and Fomalhaut (A3 V). The seminal review of MK classification by Morgan & Keenan (1973) 
  didn't provide any dagger standards between types A3 V and F2 V. HD 23886 was suggested as an A5 V standard in 1978. Richard Gray & Robert Garrison provided the most recent contributions to the A dwarf spectral sequence in a pair of papers in 1987 and 1989. They list an assortment of fast- and slow-rotating A-type dwarf spectral standards, including HD 45320 (A1 V), HD 88955 (A2 V), 2 Hydri (A7 V), 21 Leonis Minoris (A7 V), and 44 Ceti (A9 V). Besides the MK standards provided in Morgan's papers and the Gray & Garrison papers, one also occasionally sees Delta Leonis (A4 V) listed as a standard. There are no published A6 V and A8 V standard stars.
caption: The Morgan-Keenan spectral classification
exif: {}