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Rare variable star 42 EP

HD 133444

RA 227.3523° · Dec -72.0625° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
42 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Carbon star (sooty red) +24
  • Strongly variable +10
  • Variable star +5
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 42

8 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Carbon star (sooty red) · +24
  • Strongly variable · +10
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 1.1 million times as much light as the Sun. It only looks ordinary because it is so far away.

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads C+ — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.
  • 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.7 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out orange (B−V 1.2) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 4210 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-10.28
bv
1.25
constellation
Aps
luminosity
1127197.4562
mag
9.72
name
HD 133444
spect
C+
var amplitude
0.76
var designation
S
var max
9.551
var min
10.311

About HD 133444

HD 133444 is a rare variable star. It sits in the constellation Aps, shines at apparent magnitude 9.72 and has spectral type C+.

Its spectrum reads C+ — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.

How to see it

Look for HD 133444 in the constellation Aps. At apparent magnitude 9.72, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 133444 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 HD 133444 is a rare variable star

HD 133444 scores 42 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Variable star, Carbon star (sooty red), 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.