Trash star 6 EP

HD 216649

RA 343.6937° · Dec -6.9641° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges

6 pts · Trash

Trash 15 pts → Common

Star +3
On the zodiac +3

Total score 6

9 more points to reach Common.

Badges

Star · +3
On the zodiac · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

True brightness. It pours out about 428.5 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 R... — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.

Find it in the sky

How to spot it. At magnitude 10.8 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 September — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out orange (B−V 1.2) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.

By the numbers

Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 4290 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: -9.25
bv: 1.21
constellation: Aqr
luminosity: 436515.8322
mag: 10.75
name: HD 216649
spect: R...

Nearby objects

About HD 216649

HD 216649 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Aqr, shines at apparent magnitude 10.75 and has spectral type R....

Its spectrum reads R... — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.

How to see it

Look for HD 216649 in the constellation Aqr. At apparent magnitude 10.75, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 216649 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 216649 is a trash star

HD 216649 scores 6 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and On the zodiac — 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.