The forgotten bright star: Theta Eridani as a millenary stellar transient observed by Hipparchus, Ptolemy and al-Sufi

Abstract

Theta Eridani is a V=2.9 star that was nonetheless reported as one of the thirteen brightest stars in the night sky by both Ptolemy in his Almagest (137 AD) and by al-Sufi in his The Book of Fixed Stars (964 AD), in addition to being previously referred by Hipparchus (129 BC) as a particularly bright star. The discrepancy between its historical and modern visual magnitude $\Delta V \sim 2.7$ is the highest among the $\sim 1000$ stars in the Almagest. Theta Eridani is actually a triple star system, and here we combine interferometric data from VLTI/PIONIER and VLTI/GRAVITY, spectroscopic data from ESPaDOns and FEROS, and photometric data from TESS in order to solve for the orbital parameters, masses and radii of the close inner binary Theta Eridani Aa+Ab. We find that it is a tight eccentric binary ($a=0.083 \text{ au}$, $e=0.105$) of intermediate-mass stars ($M_{Aa}\simeq 2.3 M_{\odot}$, $M_{Ab}\simeq 2.2 M_{\odot}$) that are extended to $\sim 80\%$ of their Roche lobe radii ($R_{Aa}\simeq 4.3 R_{\odot}, R_{Ab} \simeq 4.0 R_{\odot}$), resulting in prominent ellipsoidal oscillations in the lightcurve. We also find that the primary is in a very special phase of its evolution in which it has just finished core hydrogen burning. The remarkable combination of orbital and stellar parameters hints that the historical brightening of Theta Eridani was due to a millenary transient phase powered by orbital energy extraction during a long-lived ``common envelope'' stage triggered by eccentric Roche lobe overflow in a previously more eccentric binary ($e\simeq0.6$). This strengthens the case that the apparent brightening was real and not due to an error by three different ancient observers, as has been commonly claimed in the past.