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Uncommon variable star 27 EP

HD 8781

RA 21.0508° · Dec -70.6753° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
27 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Bright giant +12
  • Variable star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 27

7 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0II/III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.
  • 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.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.1 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Hydrus.
  • 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.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Properties

absmag
1.463
bv
0.328
constellation
Hyi
dist ly
683.7652
luminosity
22.636
mag
8.07
name
HD 8781
spect
F0II/III
var amplitude
0.06
var designation
BG
var max
8.043
var min
8.103

About HD 8781

HD 8781 is an uncommon variable star. It lies about 683.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Hyi, shines at apparent magnitude 8.07 and has spectral type F0II/III.

Its spectrum reads F0II/III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 8781 in the constellation Hyi. At apparent magnitude 8.07, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 8781 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 8781 is an uncommon variable star

HD 8781 scores 27 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Yellow-white F-type star, Bright giant, 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.