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Uncommon variable star 22 EP

HIP 386

RA 1.2039° · Dec 68.1887° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
22 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 22

12 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 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 B2 — 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.
  • 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 9.1 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Cepheus.
  • 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 yellow (B−V 0.7) — almost exactly the Sun's own shade — a stellar twin in colour, if not in size.
  • 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.

Properties

absmag
-10.9
bv
0.652
constellation
Cep
luminosity
1995262.315
mag
9.1
name
HIP 386
spect
B2
var amplitude
0.2
var designation
V399
var max
9.017
var min
9.217

About HIP 386

HIP 386 is an uncommon variable star. It sits in the constellation Cep, shines at apparent magnitude 9.1 and has spectral type B2.

Its spectrum reads B2 — 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 HIP 386 in the constellation Cep. At apparent magnitude 9.1, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 386 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 386 is an uncommon variable star

HIP 386 scores 22 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type star, Gently 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.