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Trash star 8 EP

HD 38749

RA 87.3221° · Dec 29.7268° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
8 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 8

7 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • White A-type star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A5 — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 7.8 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 yellow-white (B−V 0.5) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
  • 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 6260 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
-12.15
bv
0.528
constellation
Aur
luminosity
6309573.4448
mag
7.85
name
HD 38749
spect
A5

Nearby objects

About HD 38749

HD 38749 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Aur, shines at apparent magnitude 7.85 and has spectral type A5.

Its spectrum reads A5 — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 38749 in the constellation Aur. At apparent magnitude 7.85, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 38749 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 38749 is a trash star

HD 38749 scores 8 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and White A-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.