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Trash star 10 EP

HD 138056

RA 231.8308° · Dec 53.2339° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
10 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 10

5 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Orange K-type star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 2.6 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 K2 — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Draco.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north 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) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • Why no green stars. No star ever looks green: a surface hot enough to peak in green also floods out plenty of red and blue, and your eye blends the mixture back to white.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 4760 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.2
bv
0.992
constellation
Dra
luminosity
2630267.9919
mag
8.8
name
HD 138056
spect
K2

Nearby objects

About HD 138056

HD 138056 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 8.8 and has spectral type K2.

Its spectrum reads K2 — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 138056 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 8.8, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 138056 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 138056 is a trash star

HD 138056 scores 10 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Orange K-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.