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Common star 20 EP

HD 4460

RA 11.8293° · Dec 47.8057° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3.7 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 B1.5Vn... — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is on the main sequence, quietly fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun does.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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 October — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out blue-white (B−V -0.2) — the hallmark of a surface far hotter than the Sun's.
  • 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
-11.58
bv
-0.157
constellation
Cas
luminosity
3732501.578
mag
8.42
name
HD 4460
spect
B1.5Vn...

About HD 4460

HD 4460 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 8.42 and has spectral type B1.5Vn....

Its spectrum reads B1.5Vn... — 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 HD 4460 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 8.42, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 4460 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 4460 is a common star

HD 4460 scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence star and Blue-white 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.