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Trash star 12 EP

HD 38689

RA 87.2041° · Dec 27.3638° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
12 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 12

3 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8 — 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 7.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Taurus.
  • 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 0.1) — 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.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 8580 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

What's in a name

  • Its catalogue. The HD number is from the Henry Draper Catalogue, in which Annie Jump Cannon personally classified the spectra of nearly 400,000 stars — still the largest such feat by one person.

Properties

absmag
-12.27
bv
0.149
constellation
Tau
luminosity
7046930.6897
mag
7.73
name
HD 38689
spect
B8

About HD 38689

HD 38689 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Tau, shines at apparent magnitude 7.73 and has spectral type B8.

Its spectrum reads B8 — 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 38689 in the constellation Tau. At apparent magnitude 7.73, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 38689 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 38689 is a trash star

HD 38689 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, On the zodiac and Hot blue B-type 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.