Pi Puppis

Pi Puppis, Latinized from π Puppis, also named Ahadi, is the second-brightest star in the southern constellation of Puppis. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 2.733, so it can be viewed with the naked eye at night. Parallax measurements yield an estimated distance of roughly 810 ly from the Earth. This is a double star with a magnitude 6.86 companion at an angular separation of 0.72 arcsecond and a position angle of 148° from the brighter primary.

The spectrum of Pi Puppis matches a stellar classification of K3 Ib. The Ib luminosity class indicates this a lower luminosity supergiant star that has consumed the hydrogen fuel at its core, evolved away from the main sequence, and expanded to about 235 times the Sun's radius. The effective temperature of the star's outer envelope is approximately 4,000 K, which gives it the orange hue of a K-type star. It is a semiregular variable star that varies in apparent magnitude from a high of 2.70 down to 2.85. Pi Puppis is the brightest star in the open cluster Collinder 135.

Naming
The star has the traditional name Ahadi, which is derived from Arabic for "having much promise". In Chinese, 弧矢 (Hú Shǐ), meaning Bow and Arrow, refers to an asterism consisting of π Puppis, δ Canis Majoris, η Canis Majoris, HD 63032, HD 65456, ο Puppis, k Puppis, ε Canis Majoris and κ Canis Majoris. Consequently, π Puppis itself is known as 弧矢九 (Hú Shǐ jiǔ, the Ninth Star of Bow and Arrow.)