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Uncommon variable star 23 EP

HD 141969

RA 239.0071° · Dec -66.1526° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
23 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 23

11 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 570.2 thousand 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 Be — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.
  • 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 10.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Triangulum Australe.
  • 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 blue-white (B−V -0.2) — the hallmark of a surface far hotter than the Sun's.
  • 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.

Properties

absmag
-9.56
bv
-0.174
constellation
TrA
luminosity
580764.4175
mag
10.44
name
HD 141969
spect
Be
var amplitude
0.15
var designation
MM
var max
10.367
var min
10.517

Nearby objects

About HD 141969

HD 141969 is an uncommon variable star. It sits in the constellation TrA, shines at apparent magnitude 10.44 and has spectral type Be.

Its spectrum reads Be — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 141969 in the constellation TrA. At apparent magnitude 10.44, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 141969 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 141969 is an uncommon variable star

HD 141969 scores 23 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Hot blue B-type star, Blue-white star, Gently 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.