About HIP 115542
HIP 115542 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 8.26 and has spectral type F7Ib.
Its spectrum reads F7Ib — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Uncommon star 28 EP
HIP 115542
RA 351.0660° · Dec 61.5882° · star
Score breakdown
· 4 badgesUncommon 34 pts → Rare
- Supergiant +18
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 28
6 more points to reach Rare.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
- Supergiant · +18
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 4.2 million 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 F7Ib — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
- 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 8.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Cassiopeia.
- 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 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) — 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 4690 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Properties
- absmag
- -11.74
- bv
- 1.021
- constellation
- Cas
- luminosity
- 4325138.3104
- mag
- 8.26
- name
- HIP 115542
- spect
- F7Ib
Nearby objects
How to see it
Look for HIP 115542 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 8.26, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 115542 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 115542 is an uncommon star
HIP 115542 scores 28 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-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.