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Common variable star 17 EP

HD 53116

RA 105.9480° · Dec -1.0996° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Variable star +5
  • White A-type star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 2.4 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 A0p... — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • 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 8.9 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 brilliant white (B−V 0) — hotter and whiter than the Sun, the colour of Sirius or Vega.
  • 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
-11.11
bv
0.007
constellation
Mon
luminosity
2421029.0467
mag
8.89
name
HD 53116
spect
A0p...
var amplitude
0.07
var designation
V646
var max
8.843
var min
8.913

About HD 53116

HD 53116 is a common variable star. It sits in the constellation Mon, shines at apparent magnitude 8.89 and has spectral type A0p....

Its spectrum reads A0p... — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 53116 in the constellation Mon. At apparent magnitude 8.89, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 53116 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 53116 is a common variable star

HD 53116 scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Variable star, White A-type star, Gently 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.