About HD 174281
HD 174281 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Sct and shines at apparent magnitude 8.66.
Its colour puts the surface at roughly 3840 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Trash star 11 EP
HD 174281
RA 282.5230° · Dec -6.4170° · star
Score breakdown
· 2 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Deep red star +8
- Star +3
Total score 11
4 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Deep red star · +8
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.
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 July — that's when to go looking.
Its true colour
- Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out deep orange-red (B−V 1.5) — one of the coolest surfaces a star can have while still fusing.
By the numbers
- Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 3840 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
- -11.34
- bv
- 1.47
- constellation
- Sct
- luminosity
- 2992264.6366
- mag
- 8.66
- name
- HD 174281
Nearby objects
- Uncommon J1849-0614 pulsar · 0.2° away
- Rare Wild Duck Cluster cluster · 0.3° away
- Trash HD 174512 star · 0.3° away
- Common HD 174553 variable star · 0.3° away
- Uncommon J1849-0636 pulsar · 0.3° away
- Uncommon HD 173987 star · 0.4° away
- Uncommon J1851-0633 pulsar · 0.4° away
- Epic HR 7083 star · 0.5° away
How to see it
Look for HD 174281 in the constellation Sct. At apparent magnitude 8.66, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 174281 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 174281 is a trash star
HD 174281 scores 11 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Deep red 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.