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Uncommon star 33 EP

HD 15558

RA 38.1772° · Dec 61.4560° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
33 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 33

1 more point to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Blazing O-type star · +26

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads O5e — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 7.9 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 yellow-white (B−V 0.4) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
  • 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 6720 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
-12.09
bv
0.43
constellation
Cas
luminosity
5970352.8658
mag
7.91
name
HD 15558
spect
O5e

About HD 15558

HD 15558 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 7.91 and has spectral type O5e.

Its spectrum reads O5e — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

How to see it

Look for HD 15558 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 7.91, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 15558 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 15558 is an uncommon star

HD 15558 scores 33 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Blazing O-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.