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Trash star 13 EP

HIP 12621

RA 40.5561° · Dec 42.7779° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
13 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • White A-type star +5
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Star +3
Total score 13

2 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 2.5 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 A0IV — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • Where it is in life. It is a subgiant, caught in the act of leaving the main sequence as the hydrogen in its core runs out.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.8 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.
  • 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
-11.18
bv
0.057
constellation
Per
luminosity
2582260.1906
mag
8.82
name
HIP 12621
spect
A0IV

About HIP 12621

HIP 12621 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Per, shines at apparent magnitude 8.82 and has spectral type A0IV.

Its spectrum reads A0IV — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HIP 12621 in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 8.82, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 12621 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 12621 is a trash star

HIP 12621 scores 13 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, White A-type star and Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) — 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.