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Rare star 40 EP

HD 163800

RA 269.7386° · Dec -22.5175° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Toward the galactic centre +8
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Toward the galactic centre · +8
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Blazing O-type star · +26

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads O7/O8 — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Sagittarius.
  • 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 0.2) — 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 7920 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

What's in a name

  • Its catalogue. The HD number is from the Henry Draper Catalogue, in which Annie Jump Cannon personally classified the spectra of nearly 400,000 stars — still the largest such feat by one person.

Properties

absmag
-13
bv
0.232
constellation
Sgr
luminosity
13803842.646
mag
7
name
HD 163800
spect
O7/O8

About HD 163800

HD 163800 is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Sgr, shines at apparent magnitude 7 and has spectral type O7/O8.

Its spectrum reads O7/O8 — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

How to see it

Look for HD 163800 in the constellation Sgr. At apparent magnitude 7, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 163800 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 163800 is a rare star

HD 163800 scores 40 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Toward the galactic centre, On the zodiac and Blazing O-type 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.