Distance (Light Years) 139.6 ± 4.5Another name for this star is Marchab. The name of this star is an Arabic word designating anything that can be ridden, a saddle, a ship, or a vehicle. Reading the name to mean "Saddle," the connection with the idea of the constellation as a horse, is obvious.
Description of the Star
Markab is a hot, blue B9V main sequence star having about 160 times the luminosity of the sun. The spectral type implies an effective temperature of 11,000 K, a diameter about 2.8 times that of the sun, and a mass of about 4 solar masses.
Located in Pegasus is M15 - a beautiful globular cluster composed of hundreds of thousands of stars forming a tight ball which orbits outside our galaxy, the Milky Way. M-15 is a strong source of x-ray radiation. Astronomers believe that these x-rays are the result of a huge Black-Hole which lurks at the heart of the star cluster and is devouring stars and burping x-rays in the process.