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Rare star 37 EP

HD 56925

RA 109.6214° · Dec -13.2171° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
37 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself) +34
  • Star +3
Total score 37

13 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself) · +34

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 224.9 thousand 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 WN... — a Wolf-Rayet star: a stellar monster shedding its own outer layers in a ferocious wind, on its way to a supernova.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 11.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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 brilliant white (B−V 0.3) — 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.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 7690 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-8.55
bv
0.266
constellation
CMa
luminosity
229086.7653
mag
11.45
name
HD 56925
spect
WN...

About HD 56925

HD 56925 is a rare star. It sits in the constellation CMa, shines at apparent magnitude 11.45 and has spectral type WN....

Its spectrum reads WN... — a Wolf-Rayet star: a stellar monster shedding its own outer layers in a ferocious wind, on its way to a supernova.

How to see it

Look for HD 56925 in the constellation CMa. At apparent magnitude 11.45, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 56925 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 56925 is a rare star

HD 56925 scores 37 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself) — 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.