About HD 50170
HD 50170 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Mon, shines at apparent magnitude 6.86 and has spectral type F2.
Its spectrum reads F2 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Trash star 6 EP
HD 50170
RA 102.9659° · Dec -2.1760° · star
Score breakdown
· 2 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 6
9 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
Trivia
What it actually is
- Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 6.9 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 January — 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 0.5) — 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 6300 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
What's in a name
- Its catalogue. The HD number is from the Henry Draper Catalogue, in which Annie Jump Cannon personally classified the spectra of nearly 400,000 stars — still the largest such feat by one person.
Properties
- absmag
- -13.14
- bv
- 0.52
- constellation
- Mon
- luminosity
- 15703628.0433
- mag
- 6.86
- name
- HD 50170
- spect
- F2
Nearby objects
- Trash HD 50134 star · 0.2° away
- Common HIP 33014 variable star · 0.4° away
- Uncommon J0652-0142 pulsar · 0.5° away
- Trash HD 50169 star · 0.5° away
- Uncommon HR 2521 star · 0.7° away
- Uncommon HIP 32854 variable star · 0.8° away
- Uncommon HD 292630 variable star · 0.8° away
- Trash HR 2577 star · 0.8° away
How to see it
Look for HD 50170 in the constellation Mon. At apparent magnitude 6.86, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 50170 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 50170 is a trash star
HD 50170 scores 6 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Yellow-white F-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.