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Common star 18 EP

HD 236215

RA 356.8769° · Dec 53.2307° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Red dwarf +6
  • Cool red M-type star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Cool red M-type star · +5
  • Red dwarf · +6

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 1.8 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 M1 — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.2 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Cassiopeia.
  • 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 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.

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
-10.81
bv
1.022
constellation
Cas
luminosity
1836538.3433
mag
9.19
name
HD 236215
spect
M1

About HD 236215

HD 236215 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 9.19 and has spectral type M1.

Its spectrum reads M1 — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.

How to see it

Look for HD 236215 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 9.19, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 236215 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 236215 is a common star

HD 236215 scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Cool red M-type star and Red dwarf — 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.