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Trash star 10 EP

HD 161262

RA 266.1004° · Dec 2.9673° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
10 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 10

5 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Main-sequence star · +2

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3.7 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 A2V... — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • Where it is in life. It is on the main sequence, quietly fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun does.

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 Ophiuchus.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • 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 orange (B−V 1.2) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 4270 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.58
bv
1.22
constellation
Oph
luminosity
3732501.578
mag
8.42
name
HD 161262
spect
A2V...

Nearby objects

About HD 161262

HD 161262 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Oph, shines at apparent magnitude 8.42 and has spectral type A2V....

Its spectrum reads A2V... — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 161262 in the constellation Oph. At apparent magnitude 8.42, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 161262 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 161262 is a trash star

HD 161262 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, White A-type star and Main-sequence 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.