← Back to dex
Trash star 14 EP

HD 20920

RA 50.9815° · Dec 41.3370° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 3 badges
14 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 14

1 more point to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 5.2 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 B8 — 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 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 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 -0.1) — 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 10910 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.96
bv
-0.058
constellation
Per
luminosity
5296634.4389
mag
8.04
name
HD 20920
spect
B8

Nearby objects

About HD 20920

HD 20920 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Per, shines at apparent magnitude 8.04 and has spectral type B8.

Its spectrum reads B8 — 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 20920 in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 8.04, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 20920 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 20920 is a trash star

HD 20920 scores 14 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash 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 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.