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Uncommon star 25 EP

HIP 9498

RA 30.5477° · Dec 62.8420° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Bright giant +12
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 1.8 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 B3II — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.2 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 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.

Properties

absmag
-10.78
bv
0.21
constellation
Cas
luminosity
1786487.5749
mag
9.22
name
HIP 9498
spect
B3II

About HIP 9498

HIP 9498 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 9.22 and has spectral type B3II.

Its spectrum reads B3II — 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 9498 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 9.22, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 9498 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 9498 is an uncommon star

HIP 9498 scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type star and Bright giant — 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.