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Uncommon star 32 EP

HD 269660

RA 82.6990° · Dec -71.0673° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Supergiant +18
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 291.1 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 B2Ia — 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 luminous supergiant — among the largest and rarest stars in the galaxy.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 11.2 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Mensa.
  • 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 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) — 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
-8.83
bv
-0.007
constellation
Men
luminosity
296483.139
mag
11.17
name
HD 269660
spect
B2Ia

About HD 269660

HD 269660 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Men, shines at apparent magnitude 11.17 and has spectral type B2Ia.

Its spectrum reads B2Ia — 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 269660 in the constellation Men. At apparent magnitude 11.17, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 269660 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 269660 is an uncommon star

HD 269660 scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star, Supergiant 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.