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Trash star 13 EP

HD 18246

RA 44.2680° · Dec 39.0651° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
13 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • White A-type star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 13

2 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 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 A2 — 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.6 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 November — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out blue-white (B−V -0) — the hallmark of a surface far hotter than the Sun's.
  • 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 10520 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.37
bv
-0.03
constellation
Per
luminosity
3076096.8147
mag
8.63
name
HD 18246
spect
A2

Nearby objects

About HD 18246

HD 18246 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Per, shines at apparent magnitude 8.63 and has spectral type A2.

Its spectrum reads A2 — 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 HD 18246 in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 8.63, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 18246 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 18246 is a trash star

HD 18246 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 Blue-white 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.