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Common star 21 EP

HD 15990

RA 39.0571° · Dec 55.9317° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Bright giant +12
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3.3 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 B8II — 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 8.5 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 0.2) — 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
-11.48
bv
0.18
constellation
Per
luminosity
3404081.897
mag
8.52
name
HD 15990
spect
B8II

Nearby objects

About HD 15990

HD 15990 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Per, shines at apparent magnitude 8.52 and has spectral type B8II.

Its spectrum reads B8II — 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 15990 in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 8.52, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 15990 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 15990 is a common star

HD 15990 scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, 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.