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Rare star 39 EP

26 Cep

RA 336.7721° · Dec 65.1323° · 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 B0.5Ib — 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 5.5 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Cepheus.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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-white (B−V 0.3) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
  • 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 7450 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-14.48
bv
0.302
constellation
Cep
luminosity
53951062.2515
mag
5.52
name
26 Cep
spect
B0.5Ib

About 26 Cep

26 Cep is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Cep, shines at apparent magnitude 5.52 and has spectral type B0.5Ib.

Its spectrum reads B0.5Ib — 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 26 Cep in the constellation Cep. At apparent magnitude 5.52, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 26 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 26 Cep is a rare star

26 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.