← Back to dex
Common star 17 EP

HD 293852

RA 77.4009° · Dec -3.9254° · star

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

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 2.6 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 K0III — 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 8.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Eridanus.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around December — 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 -0.2) — 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.

Properties

absmag
-11.21
bv
-0.2
constellation
Eri
luminosity
2654605.562
mag
8.79
name
HD 293852
spect
K0III

Nearby objects

About HD 293852

HD 293852 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Eri, shines at apparent magnitude 8.79 and has spectral type K0III.

Its spectrum reads K0III — 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 293852 in the constellation Eri. At apparent magnitude 8.79, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 293852 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 293852 is a common star

HD 293852 scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Orange K-type star, Giant 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.