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Trash star 9 EP

HD 260986

RA 99.5074° · Dec 9.8836° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
9 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 9

6 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 1 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 B3 — 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 9.8 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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 yellow-white (B−V 0.3) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
  • 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 7280 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-10.21
bv
0.33
constellation
Mon
luminosity
1056817.5092
mag
9.79
name
HD 260986
spect
B3

About HD 260986

HD 260986 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Mon, shines at apparent magnitude 9.79 and has spectral type B3.

Its spectrum reads B3 — 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 260986 in the constellation Mon. At apparent magnitude 9.79, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 260986 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 260986 is a trash star

HD 260986 scores 9 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star 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.