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Uncommon variable star 23 EP

HIP 89526

RA 274.0232° · Dec -30.8531° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
23 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Toward the galactic centre +8
  • Variable star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • On the zodiac +3
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 23

11 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Toward the galactic centre · +8
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 214.8 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 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.

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
-8.5
constellation
Sgr
luminosity
218776.1624
mag
11.5
name
HIP 89526
var amplitude
0.33
var designation
V4074
var max
11.338
var min
11.668

About HIP 89526

HIP 89526 is an uncommon variable star. It sits in the constellation Sgr and shines at apparent magnitude 11.5.

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 89526 in the constellation Sgr. At apparent magnitude 11.5, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 89526 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 89526 is an uncommon variable star

HIP 89526 scores 23 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Toward the galactic centre, On the zodiac, Gently 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.