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Common star 21 EP

HD 38017

RA 86.0215° · Dec 30.9338° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Bright giant +12
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 4.9 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 B3II — 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.1 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Auriga.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • 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 0.3) — 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
-11.89
bv
0.268
constellation
Aur
luminosity
4965923.2145
mag
8.11
name
HD 38017
spect
B3II

Nearby objects

About HD 38017

HD 38017 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Aur, shines at apparent magnitude 8.11 and has spectral type B3II.

Its spectrum reads B3II — 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 38017 in the constellation Aur. At apparent magnitude 8.11, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 38017 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 38017 is a common star

HD 38017 scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

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