About HIP 12451
HIP 12451 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Cet and shines at apparent magnitude 11.77.
Its colour puts the surface at roughly 8930 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Trash star 3 EP
HIP 12451
RA 40.0736° · Dec 9.0095° · star
Score breakdown
· 1 badgeTrash 15 pts → Common
- Star +3
Total score 3
12 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 167.5 thousand times as much light as the Sun. It only looks ordinary because it is so far away.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 11.8 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Cetus.
- Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
- 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.
- 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 8930 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
What's in a name
- Its catalogue. The HIP number comes from Hipparcos, the ESA satellite that between 1989 and 1993 pinned down 118,000 stars precisely enough to triangulate their distances.
Properties
- absmag
- -8.23
- bv
- 0.11
- constellation
- Cet
- luminosity
- 170608.2389
- mag
- 11.77
- name
- HIP 12451
Nearby objects
How to see it
Look for HIP 12451 in the constellation Cet. At apparent magnitude 11.77, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 12451 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 12451 is a trash star
HIP 12451 scores 3 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 1 science badge — 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.