Uncommon variable star 24 EP

HIP 104930

RA 318.8244° · Dec 0.0763° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges

24 pts · Uncommon

Uncommon 34 pts → Rare

Strongly variable +10
Variable star +5
On the zodiac +3
Yellow-white F-type star +3
A named variable star +3

Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

Variable star · +5
On the zodiac · +3
Yellow-white F-type star · +3
Strongly variable · +10
A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

True brightness. It pours out about 207 thousand 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 F2.5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
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.

Find it in the sky

How to spot it. At magnitude 11.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Aquarius.
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 August — that's when to go looking.

What's in a name

Its catalogue. The HIP number comes from Hipparcos, the ESA satellite that between 1989 and 1993 pinned down 118,000 stars precisely enough to triangulate their distances.

How we came to know it

Cosmic yardstick. Variable stars are how we measured the universe. In 1912 Henrietta Leavitt showed that a pulsating star's rhythm reveals its true brightness — turning these stars into distance markers.

Properties

absmag: -8.46
constellation: Aqr
luminosity: 210862.815
mag: 11.54
name: HIP 104930
spect: F2.5
var amplitude: 1.21
var designation: SW
var max: 10.546
var min: 11.756

Nearby objects

About HIP 104930

HIP 104930 is an uncommon variable star. It sits in the constellation Aqr, shines at apparent magnitude 11.54 and has spectral type F2.5.

Its spectrum reads F2.5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HIP 104930 in the constellation Aqr. At apparent magnitude 11.54, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 104930 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 HIP 104930 is an uncommon variable star

HIP 104930 scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, On the zodiac, Yellow-white F-type star, Strongly 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.