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Rare star 39 EP

13 Cep

RA 328.7215° · Dec 56.6112° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8Ibvar — 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 supergiant, hundreds of times wider than the Sun.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 5.7 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Cepheus.
  • 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out yellow (B−V 0.7) — almost exactly the Sun's own shade — a stellar twin in colour, if not in size.
  • 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 5760 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-14.26
bv
0.655
constellation
Cep
luminosity
44055486.3507
mag
5.74
name
13 Cep
spect
B8Ibvar

About 13 Cep

13 Cep is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Cep, shines at apparent magnitude 5.74 and has spectral type B8Ibvar.

Its spectrum reads B8Ibvar — 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 13 Cep in the constellation Cep. At apparent magnitude 5.74, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 13 Cep 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 13 Cep is a rare star

13 Cep scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type star and Supergiant — 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.