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Uncommon variable star 27 EP

HIP 72444

RA 222.2086° · Dec -71.3283° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
27 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Strongly variable +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 27

7 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Strongly variable · +10
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 12.1 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Apus.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around May — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 25.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
3.841
constellation
Aps
dist ly
1456.0537
luminosity
2.5328
mag
12.09
name
HIP 72444
spect
F2
var amplitude
1.25
var designation
TY
var max
11.193
var min
12.443

About HIP 72444

HIP 72444 is an uncommon variable star. It lies about 1,456.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Aps, shines at apparent magnitude 12.09 and has spectral type F2.

Its spectrum reads F2 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HIP 72444 in the constellation Aps. At apparent magnitude 12.09, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 72444 is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why HIP 72444 is an uncommon variable star

HIP 72444 scores 27 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star, Strongly variable and A named variable star — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.