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Common star 16 EP

HD 51285

RA 103.9285° · Dec -24.6788° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
16 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 16

6 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 4.7 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 B2V(n) — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is on the main sequence, quietly fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun does.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.1 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Canis Major.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • 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 blue-white (B−V -0.2) — the hallmark of a surface far hotter than the Sun's.
  • 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.

Properties

absmag
-11.86
bv
-0.163
constellation
CMa
luminosity
4830588.0204
mag
8.14
name
HD 51285
spect
B2V(n)

Nearby objects

About HD 51285

HD 51285 is a common star. It sits in the constellation CMa, shines at apparent magnitude 8.14 and has spectral type B2V(n).

Its spectrum reads B2V(n) — 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 51285 in the constellation CMa. At apparent magnitude 8.14, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 51285 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 51285 is a common star

HD 51285 scores 16 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence star and Blue-white 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.