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Rare variable star 40 EP

HD 56167

RA 110.4338° · Dec 69.6708° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Carbon star (sooty red) +24
  • Variable star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Carbon star (sooty red) · +24
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3.3 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 C3.2e — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.
  • 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 8.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Camelopardalis.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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 1.1) — 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 4420 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.48
bv
1.144
constellation
Cam
luminosity
3404081.897
mag
8.52
name
HD 56167
spect
C3.2e
var amplitude
0.2
var designation
RU
var max
8.392
var min
8.592

About HD 56167

HD 56167 is a rare variable star. It sits in the constellation Cam, shines at apparent magnitude 8.52 and has spectral type C3.2e.

Its spectrum reads C3.2e — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.

How to see it

Look for HD 56167 in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 8.52, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 56167 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 56167 is a rare variable star

HD 56167 scores 40 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Carbon star (sooty red), 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.