← Back to dex
Trash star 14 EP

HD 155438

RA 258.6388° · Dec -54.3701° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 3 badges
14 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Star +3
Total score 14

1 more point to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3.6 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 B6:IVn — 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.

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 Ara.
  • 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 June — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out brilliant white (B−V 0) — hotter and whiter than the Sun, the colour of Sirius or Vega.
  • 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 9920 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.56
bv
0.017
constellation
Ara
luminosity
3664375.7465
mag
8.44
name
HD 155438
spect
B6:IVn

Nearby objects

About HD 155438

HD 155438 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Ara, shines at apparent magnitude 8.44 and has spectral type B6:IVn.

Its spectrum reads B6:IVn — 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 155438 in the constellation Ara. At apparent magnitude 8.44, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 155438 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 155438 is a trash star

HD 155438 scores 14 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star and Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) — 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.