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Uncommon star 22 EP

HD 42896

RA 93.5258° · Dec 20.1697° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
22 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • In Orion's hunting ground +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 22

12 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • In Orion's hunting ground · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3 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 B1:V:nn — 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 8.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Orion.
  • 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 blue-white (B−V -0.1) — 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.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 11230 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.38
bv
-0.079
constellation
Ori
luminosity
3104559.5881
mag
8.62
name
HD 42896
spect
B1:V:nn

About HD 42896

HD 42896 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Ori, shines at apparent magnitude 8.62 and has spectral type B1:V:nn.

Its spectrum reads B1:V:nn — 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 42896 in the constellation Ori. At apparent magnitude 8.62, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 42896 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 42896 is an uncommon star

HD 42896 scores 22 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, In Orion's hunting ground, Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence star 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.