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Common variable star 21 EP

HIP 31361

RA 98.6471° · Dec 13.0791° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Strongly variable +10
  • Variable star +5
  • On the zodiac +3
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Strongly variable · +10
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 157 thousand times as much light as the Sun. It only looks ordinary because it is so far away.

What it actually is

  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 11.8 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.

What's in a name

  • Its catalogue. The HIP number comes from Hipparcos, the ESA satellite that between 1989 and 1993 pinned down 118,000 stars precisely enough to triangulate their distances.

How we came to know it

  • Cosmic yardstick. Variable stars are how we measured the universe. In 1912 Henrietta Leavitt showed that a pulsating star's rhythm reveals its true brightness — turning these stars into distance markers.

Properties

absmag
-8.16
constellation
Gem
luminosity
159955.8029
mag
11.84
name
HIP 31361
var amplitude
1.13
var designation
BB
var max
10.906
var min
12.036

About HIP 31361

HIP 31361 is a common variable star. It sits in the constellation Gem and shines at apparent magnitude 11.84.

This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

How to see it

Look for HIP 31361 in the constellation Gem. At apparent magnitude 11.84, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 31361 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 HIP 31361 is a common variable star

HIP 31361 scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Variable star, On the zodiac, Strongly variable and A named variable 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.