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Uncommon star 27 EP

HD 167311

RA 273.7996° · Dec -12.5011° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
27 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Supergiant +18
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 27

7 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3.1 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 B0Ib — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant, hundreds of times wider than the Sun.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Serpens.
  • 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 orange (B−V 0.9) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • 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
-11.39
bv
0.937
constellation
Ser
luminosity
3133285.7243
mag
8.61
name
HD 167311
spect
B0Ib

Nearby objects

About HD 167311

HD 167311 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Ser, shines at apparent magnitude 8.61 and has spectral type B0Ib.

Its spectrum reads B0Ib — 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 167311 in the constellation Ser. At apparent magnitude 8.61, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 167311 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 167311 is an uncommon star

HD 167311 scores 27 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star and Supergiant — 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.