[9] This system is named after John Stanley Plaskett, the Canadian astronomer who discovered its binary nature in 1922.

The pair of stars have a combined visual magnitude of 6.05, and are located in the constellation of Monoceros.

[11] The brightness varies irregularly from 6.0 to 6.1 on a timescale of a few hours, thought to be due to many factors including the binary orbit, hot spots in the colliding winds, and granulation.

It has been suggested that the star may be twice as far away as assumed, not a member of the Monoceros OB2 association, and each component would be about four times as luminous as currently calculated.

[citation needed] The masses derived from the binary orbit are also somewhat higher than expected from the spectral types, but with considerable uncertainty due to assumptions about the inclination.