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Trash star 11 EP

HD 5044

RA 12.8617° · Dec -60.4423° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
11 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 11

4 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 1.4 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 K2/K3IV — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Tucana.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • 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 orange (B−V 1.4) — 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 4020 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
-10.55
bv
1.361
constellation
Tuc
luminosity
1445439.7707
mag
9.45
name
HD 5044
spect
K2/K3IV

Nearby objects

About HD 5044

HD 5044 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Tuc, shines at apparent magnitude 9.45 and has spectral type K2/K3IV.

Its spectrum reads K2/K3IV — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 5044 in the constellation Tuc. At apparent magnitude 9.45, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 5044 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 5044 is a trash star

HD 5044 scores 11 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Orange K-type star and Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) — 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.