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Epic variable star 59 EP

Lam Pav

RA 283.0543° · Dec -62.1876° · star

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Score breakdown

· 9 badges
59 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Bright giant +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 59

19 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B2II-III — 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 bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.
  • 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.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 4.2 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Pavo.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around July — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

absmag
-3.99
bv
-0.15
constellation
Pav
dist ly
1430.5088
luminosity
3435.5795
mag
4.22
name
Lam Pav
spect
B2II-III
var amplitude
0.07
var designation
Lam
var max
4.185
var min
4.255

About Lam Pav

Lam Pav is an epic variable star. It lies about 1,430.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Pav, shines at apparent magnitude 4.22 and has spectral type B2II-III.

Its spectrum reads B2II-III — 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 Lam Pav in the constellation Pav. At apparent magnitude 4.22, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Lam Pav 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 Lam Pav is an epic variable star

Lam Pav scores 59 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 19 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 9 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Hot blue B-type star, Bright giant, Blue-white star, Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) and Gently variable — 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.