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Iota Mensae is a single star about 880 light years away in the faint constellation Mensa. It has a very slightly variable apparent magnitude of 6.0, making it visible with the naked eye under good skies.
Iota Mensae has a spectral type of B8III, indicating that it has exhausted hydrogen at its core and expanded away from the main sequence. It is about 3.6 times the mass , 301 times as luminous, and has swollen to 9.5 times the radius of the Sun. It is calculated to be 314 million years old.
It has been catalogued as a chemically peculiar star with abnormally strong lines of silicon in its spectrum but this classification is now considered doubtful. Its brightness varies by a few hundredths of a magnitude. Its period was initially measured at 2.6 days, but this is now considered to be a period of 5.3 days with primary and secondary minima of a similar depth. The variability is thought to be due to the rotation of the star.