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Trash star 9 EP

HD 188403

RA 298.7315° · Dec 2.4402° · 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

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3.3 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 B8 — 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 8.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Aquila.
  • 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 brilliant white (B−V 0) — 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 10090 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.48
bv
0.003
constellation
Aql
luminosity
3404081.897
mag
8.52
name
HD 188403
spect
B8

Nearby objects

About HD 188403

HD 188403 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Aql, shines at apparent magnitude 8.52 and has spectral type B8.

Its spectrum reads B8 — 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 188403 in the constellation Aql. At apparent magnitude 8.52, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 188403 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 188403 is a trash star

HD 188403 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.