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Rare variable star 43 EP

HIP 118174

RA 359.5749° · Dec 61.2211° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
43 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Strongly variable +10
  • Variable star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 43

7 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Strongly variable · +10
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 313.3 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 F8Ibvar — 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.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 11.1 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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.

What's in a name

  • Its catalogue. The HIP number comes from Hipparcos, the ESA satellite that between 1989 and 1993 pinned down 118,000 stars precisely enough to triangulate their distances.

Properties

absmag
-8.91
constellation
Cas
luminosity
319153.7855
mag
11.09
name
HIP 118174
spect
F8Ibvar
var amplitude
0.58
var designation
CF
var max
10.798
var min
11.378

About HIP 118174

HIP 118174 is a rare variable star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 11.09 and has spectral type F8Ibvar.

Its spectrum reads F8Ibvar — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HIP 118174 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 11.09, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 118174 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 118174 is a rare variable star

HIP 118174 scores 43 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Variable star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star, Supergiant, Strongly variable and A named variable 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.