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Epic variable star 56 EP

HD 136543

RA 232.0042° · Dec -75.9296° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
56 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Carbon star (sooty red) +24
  • Strongly variable +10
  • Deep red star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Variable star +5
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 56

22 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Carbon star (sooty red) · +24
  • Deep red star · +8
  • Strongly variable · +10
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

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.

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 8.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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. ≈ 42.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.958
bv
3.81
constellation
Aps
dist ly
2415.9702
luminosity
210.4747
mag
8.39
name
HD 136543
spect
C+
var amplitude
0.62
var designation
U
var max
7.998
var min
8.618

About HD 136543

HD 136543 is an epic variable star. It lies about 2,416 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Aps, shines at apparent magnitude 8.39 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 136543 in the constellation Aps. At apparent magnitude 8.39, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 136543 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 136543 is an epic variable star

HD 136543 scores 56 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 22 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Carbon star (sooty red), Deep red 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.