About HIP 5956
HIP 5956 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Cet, shines at apparent magnitude 9.98 and has spectral type F8.
Its spectrum reads F8 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Trash star 6 EP
HIP 5956
RA 19.1592° · Dec -1.6315° · star
Score breakdown
· 2 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 6
9 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 871 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 F8 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 10 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Cetus.
- Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
- 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 yellow-white (B−V 0.5) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
- 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.
By the numbers
- Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 6340 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Properties
- absmag
- -10.02
- bv
- 0.511
- constellation
- Cet
- luminosity
- 887156.012
- mag
- 9.98
- name
- HIP 5956
- spect
- F8
How to see it
Look for HIP 5956 in the constellation Cet. At apparent magnitude 9.98, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 5956 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 5956 is a trash star
HIP 5956 scores 6 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Yellow-white F-type 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.