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Trash star 6 EP

HD 51279

RA 104.1421° · Dec -3.7845° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
6 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 6

9 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Orange K-type star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 5.4 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 K5 — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8 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 orange (B−V 1.3) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 4080 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
-12
bv
1.322
constellation
Mon
luminosity
5495408.7386
mag
8
name
HD 51279
spect
K5

Nearby objects

About HD 51279

HD 51279 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Mon, shines at apparent magnitude 8 and has spectral type K5.

Its spectrum reads K5 — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 51279 in the constellation Mon. At apparent magnitude 8, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 51279 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 51279 is a trash star

HD 51279 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 Orange K-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.