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Trash star 9 EP

HD 169512

RA 276.1885° · Dec 7.2313° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
9 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 9

6 more points to reach Common.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B9 — 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 7.9 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 brilliant white (B−V 0.1) — 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 9330 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
-12.09
bv
0.07
constellation
Oph
luminosity
5970352.8658
mag
7.91
name
HD 169512
spect
B9

About HD 169512

HD 169512 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Oph, shines at apparent magnitude 7.91 and has spectral type B9.

Its spectrum reads B9 — 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 169512 in the constellation Oph. At apparent magnitude 7.91, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 169512 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 169512 is a trash star

HD 169512 scores 9 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Hot blue B-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.