← Back to dex
Uncommon variable star 28 EP

HIP 6174

RA 19.7931° · Dec 62.3968° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 5 badges
28 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Strongly variable +10
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 28

6 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Strongly variable · +10
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 731.1 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 B3 + B9: — 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 10.2 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 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.

Properties

absmag
-9.83
bv
0.521
constellation
Cas
luminosity
744731.9739
mag
10.17
name
HIP 6174
spect
B3 + B9:
var amplitude
0.57
var designation
AQ
var max
10.017
var min
10.587

About HIP 6174

HIP 6174 is an uncommon variable star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 10.17 and has spectral type B3 + B9:.

Its spectrum reads B3 + B9: — 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 6174 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 10.17, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 6174 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 6174 is an uncommon variable star

HIP 6174 scores 28 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 6 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, 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.