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Trash star 14 EP

HIP 17538

RA 56.3231° · Dec -16.4892° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
14 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Red dwarf +6
  • Cool red M-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 14

1 more point to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Cool red M-type star · +5
  • Red dwarf · +6

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 972.7 thousand 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 M — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.9 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Eridanus.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south 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 orange (B−V 0.9) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • 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 4930 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-10.14
bv
0.927
constellation
Eri
luminosity
990831.9449
mag
9.86
name
HIP 17538
spect
M

About HIP 17538

HIP 17538 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Eri, shines at apparent magnitude 9.86 and has spectral type M.

Its spectrum reads M — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.

How to see it

Look for HIP 17538 in the constellation Eri. At apparent magnitude 9.86, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 17538 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 17538 is a trash star

HIP 17538 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, Cool red M-type star and Red dwarf — 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.