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Common variable star 18 EP

HIP 78771

RA 241.2301° · Dec -51.9535° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Strongly variable +10
  • Variable star +5
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Strongly variable · +10
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 218.8 thousand times as much light as the Sun. It only looks ordinary because it is so far away.

What it actually is

  • 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 11.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Norma.
  • 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.

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.

How we came to know it

  • Cosmic yardstick. Variable stars are how we measured the universe. In 1912 Henrietta Leavitt showed that a pulsating star's rhythm reveals its true brightness — turning these stars into distance markers.

Properties

absmag
-8.52
constellation
Nor
luminosity
222843.5149
mag
11.48
name
HIP 78771
var amplitude
0.87
var designation
TW
var max
11.055
var min
11.925

About HIP 78771

HIP 78771 is a common variable star. It sits in the constellation Nor and shines at apparent magnitude 11.48.

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.

How to see it

Look for HIP 78771 in the constellation Nor. At apparent magnitude 11.48, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 78771 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 78771 is a common variable star

HIP 78771 scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Variable 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.