About HIP 74902
HIP 74902 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Lup, shines at apparent magnitude 9.42 and has spectral type F5.
Its spectrum reads F5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Trash star 6 EP
HIP 74902
RA 229.6103° · Dec -43.9304° · star
Score breakdown
· 2 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 6
9 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 1.5 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 F5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 9.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Lupus.
- Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
- 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 1.1) — 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 4600 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
What's in a name
- Its catalogue. The HIP number comes from Hipparcos, the ESA satellite that between 1989 and 1993 pinned down 118,000 stars precisely enough to triangulate their distances.
Properties
- absmag
- -10.58
- bv
- 1.062
- constellation
- Lup
- luminosity
- 1485935.6423
- mag
- 9.42
- name
- HIP 74902
- spect
- F5
How to see it
Look for HIP 74902 in the constellation Lup. At apparent magnitude 9.42, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 74902 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 74902 is a trash star
HIP 74902 scores 6 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Yellow-white F-type 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.