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Uncommon star 27 EP

HD 169034

RA 275.8232° · Dec -13.5943° · 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 4.8 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 B2Ia — 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 luminous supergiant — among the largest and rarest stars in the galaxy.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.1 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Scutum.
  • 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 1) — 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 4710 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.88
bv
1.015
constellation
Sct
luminosity
4920395.3568
mag
8.12
name
HD 169034
spect
B2Ia

About HD 169034

HD 169034 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Sct, shines at apparent magnitude 8.12 and has spectral type B2Ia.

Its spectrum reads B2Ia — 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 169034 in the constellation Sct. At apparent magnitude 8.12, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 169034 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 169034 is an uncommon star

HD 169034 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.