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Rare variable star 41 EP

HD 32966

RA 76.5923° · Dec -14.6966° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
41 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 41

9 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8II — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 7.1 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Lepus.
  • 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 December — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

absmag
-1.1
bv
-0.095
constellation
Lep
dist ly
1436.8105
luminosity
239.8833
mag
7.12
name
HD 32966
spect
B8II
var amplitude
0.12
var designation
TU
var max
7.071
var min
7.191

About HD 32966

HD 32966 is a rare variable star. It lies about 1,436.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Lep, shines at apparent magnitude 7.12 and has spectral type B8II.

Its spectrum reads B8II — 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 32966 in the constellation Lep. At apparent magnitude 7.12, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 32966 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 32966 is a rare variable star

HD 32966 scores 41 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-type star, Bright giant, Blue-white star, Gently variable and A named variable 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.