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Trash star 12 EP

HD 26318

RA 61.4128° · Dec -63.9279° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
12 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 12

3 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 2.4 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 K3III — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Reticulum.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • 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 1.4) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 3990 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.12
bv
1.379
constellation
Ret
luminosity
2443430.5527
mag
8.88
name
HD 26318
spect
K3III

Nearby objects

About HD 26318

HD 26318 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Ret, shines at apparent magnitude 8.88 and has spectral type K3III.

Its spectrum reads K3III — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 26318 in the constellation Ret. At apparent magnitude 8.88, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 26318 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 26318 is a trash star

HD 26318 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Orange K-type star and Giant 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.