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Uncommon star 27 EP

HD 269661

RA 82.7087° · Dec -69.5248° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
27 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Supergiant +18
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 27

7 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

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

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 619.4 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 B9Ia0: — 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 10.3 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Dorado.
  • 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 brilliant white (B−V 0.1) — hotter and whiter than the Sun, the colour of Sirius or Vega.
  • 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
-9.65
bv
0.138
constellation
Dor
luminosity
630957.3445
mag
10.35
name
HD 269661
spect
B9Ia0:

About HD 269661

HD 269661 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Dor, shines at apparent magnitude 10.35 and has spectral type B9Ia0:.

Its spectrum reads B9Ia0: — 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 269661 in the constellation Dor. At apparent magnitude 10.35, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 269661 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 269661 is an uncommon star

HD 269661 scores 27 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star and Supergiant — 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.