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Trash star 12 EP

HD 259616

RA 98.5369° · Dec 20.6767° · 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

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 737.9 thousand 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 B9 — 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 10.2 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Gemini.
  • 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 9400 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-9.84
bv
0.063
constellation
Gem
luminosity
751622.894
mag
10.16
name
HD 259616
spect
B9

About HD 259616

HD 259616 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Gem, shines at apparent magnitude 10.16 and has spectral type B9.

Its spectrum reads B9 — 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 259616 in the constellation Gem. At apparent magnitude 10.16, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 259616 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 259616 is a trash star

HD 259616 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.