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Uncommon star 29 EP

HD 46485

RA 98.4623° · Dec 4.5254° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Star +3
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Blazing O-type star · +26

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 4.2 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 O8 — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Monoceros.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • 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 0.2) — 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 7820 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.73
bv
0.246
constellation
Mon
luminosity
4285485.204
mag
8.27
name
HD 46485
spect
O8

Nearby objects

About HD 46485

HD 46485 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Mon, shines at apparent magnitude 8.27 and has spectral type O8.

Its spectrum reads O8 — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

How to see it

Look for HD 46485 in the constellation Mon. At apparent magnitude 8.27, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 46485 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 46485 is an uncommon star

HD 46485 scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Blazing O-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.