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Trash star 13 EP

HIP 8659

RA 27.9010° · Dec 64.5472° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
13 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 13

2 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6

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 B5 — 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.5 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 brilliant white (B−V 0.2) — hotter and whiter than the Sun, the colour of Sirius or Vega.
  • 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 8310 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-10.54
bv
0.181
constellation
Cas
luminosity
1432187.8993
mag
9.46
name
HIP 8659
spect
B5

About HIP 8659

HIP 8659 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 9.46 and has spectral type B5.

Its spectrum reads B5 — 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 8659 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 9.46, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 8659 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 8659 is a trash star

HIP 8659 scores 13 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Hot blue B-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.