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Rare variable star 35 EP

HR 8007

RA 313.5933° · Dec 28.5220° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B2IIIvar — 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 giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.
  • 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 6.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Vulpecula.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around August — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

absmag
-0.979
bv
-0.147
constellation
Vul
dist ly
1045.3717
luminosity
214.5853
mag
6.55
name
HR 8007
spect
B2IIIvar
var amplitude
0.22
var designation
BW
var max
6.44
var min
6.66

About HR 8007

HR 8007 is a rare variable star. It lies about 1,045.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vul, shines at apparent magnitude 6.55 and has spectral type B2IIIvar.

Its spectrum reads B2IIIvar — 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 HR 8007 in the constellation Vul. At apparent magnitude 6.55, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 8007 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 HR 8007 is a rare variable star

HR 8007 scores 35 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-type star, Giant star, Blue-white star, Gently variable and A named variable 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.