About HD 10494
HD 10494 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 7.31 and has spectral type F5Ia.
Its spectrum reads F5Ia — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Uncommon star 28 EP
HD 10494
RA 26.0484° · Dec 61.8498° · star
Score breakdown
· 4 badgesUncommon 34 pts → Rare
- Supergiant +18
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 28
6 more points to reach Rare.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
- Supergiant · +18
Trivia
What it actually is
- Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5Ia — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
- Where it is in life. It is a luminous supergiant — among the largest and rarest stars in the galaxy.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 7.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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 orange (B−V 1.2) — 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 4270 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
- -12.69
- bv
- 1.22
- constellation
- Cas
- luminosity
- 10375284.1582
- mag
- 7.31
- name
- HD 10494
- spect
- F5Ia
Nearby objects
How to see it
Look for HD 10494 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 7.31, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 10494 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 10494 is an uncommon star
HD 10494 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 4 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star and Supergiant — 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.