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Uncommon variable star 24 EP

HD 13831

RA 34.1634° · Dec 56.7378° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
24 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 4.2 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 B0IIIp — 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 giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.
  • 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 8.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Perseus.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • 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 0.1) — hotter and whiter than the Sun, the colour of Sirius or Vega.

Properties

absmag
-11.72
bv
0.092
constellation
Per
luminosity
4246195.6395
mag
8.28
name
HD 13831
spect
B0IIIp
var amplitude
0.08
var designation
V473
var max
8.246
var min
8.326

About HD 13831

HD 13831 is an uncommon variable star. It sits in the constellation Per, shines at apparent magnitude 8.28 and has spectral type B0IIIp.

Its spectrum reads B0IIIp — 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 HD 13831 in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 8.28, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 13831 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 13831 is an uncommon variable star

HD 13831 scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Hot blue B-type star, Giant star, 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.