About HD 46549
HD 46549 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Pic, shines at apparent magnitude 9.4 and has spectral type G3w....
Its spectrum reads G3w... — a G-type star: the very same spectral class as our own Sun.
Trash star 11 EP
HD 46549
RA 97.4685° · Dec -61.9846° · star
Score breakdown
· 2 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Sun-like G-type star +8
- Star +3
Total score 11
4 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Sun-like G-type star · +8
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 1.5 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 G3w... — a G-type star: the very same spectral class as our own Sun.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 9.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Pictor.
- 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 yellow (B−V 0.7) — almost exactly the Sun's own shade — a stellar twin in colour, if not in size.
- 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 5510 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Properties
- absmag
- -10.6
- bv
- 0.728
- constellation
- Pic
- luminosity
- 1513561.2484
- mag
- 9.4
- name
- HD 46549
- spect
- G3w...
How to see it
Look for HD 46549 in the constellation Pic. At apparent magnitude 9.4, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, HD 46549 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 46549 is a trash star
HD 46549 scores 11 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Sun-like G-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.