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Rare star 35 EP

HD 214080

RA 339.0268° · Dec -16.3880° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B1/B2Ib — 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 6.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Aquarius.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south 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 blue-white (B−V -0.1) — the hallmark of a surface far hotter than the Sun's.
  • 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 12390 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

What's in a name

  • Its catalogue. The HD number is from the Henry Draper Catalogue, in which Annie Jump Cannon personally classified the spectra of nearly 400,000 stars — still the largest such feat by one person.

Properties

absmag
-13.16
bv
-0.145
constellation
Aqr
luminosity
15995580.2861
mag
6.84
name
HD 214080
spect
B1/B2Ib

About HD 214080

HD 214080 is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Aqr, shines at apparent magnitude 6.84 and has spectral type B1/B2Ib.

Its spectrum reads B1/B2Ib — 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 214080 in the constellation Aqr. At apparent magnitude 6.84, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 214080 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 214080 is a rare star

HD 214080 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 5 science badges — Star, On the zodiac, Hot blue B-type star, Supergiant and Blue-white 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.