AW Canum Venaticorum is a variable star in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is visible to the naked eye with a nominal apparent visual magnitude of 4.76. The distance to this star, as measured from its annual parallax shift of 5.3 mas, is around 620 light years. It is moving closer with a heliocentric radial velocity of −44 km/s.
The variability of the brightness of HR 5219 was announced by Joel Stebbins and Charles Morse Huffer in 1928, based on observations made at Washburn Observatory. It was given its variable star designation, AW Canum Venaticorum, in 1977.
At the age of 1.1 billion years, this is an evolved red giant star with a stellar classification of M3- IIIa. It is a slow irregular variable of type Lb, with a brightness that ranges between magnitudes 4.73 and 4.85. The star has 2.2 times the mass of the Sun and has expanded to 117 times the Sun's radius. It is radiating 2,387 times the Sun's luminosity from its enlarged photosphere at an effective temperature of 3,529 K.
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