Position of β Ceti in the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram using the effective temperature by Massarotti et al. (2008) and the luminosity derived from Hipparcos data (see text for details). Standard evolution tracks at solar metallicity by Charbonnel & Lagarde (2010) are shown in black for different initial masses as indicated by labels, with solid and short dashed lines indicating the phases of evolution before and after ignition of central helium-burning, respectively. The blue long dashed line is for the 3.5 M_⊙ rotating model (see text).