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Uncommon star 29 EP

HD 169582

RA 276.4298° · Dec -9.7531° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Star +3
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Blazing O-type star · +26

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 2.9 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 O5e — 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 8.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Scutum.
  • 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 yellow-white (B−V 0.5) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
  • 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 6580 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.31
bv
0.459
constellation
Sct
luminosity
2910717.1181
mag
8.69
name
HD 169582
spect
O5e

Nearby objects

About HD 169582

HD 169582 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Sct, shines at apparent magnitude 8.69 and has spectral type O5e.

Its spectrum reads O5e — 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 169582 in the constellation Sct. At apparent magnitude 8.69, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 169582 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 169582 is an uncommon star

HD 169582 scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star 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.