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Rare star 47 EP

HD 61827

RA 114.9556° · Dec -32.5784° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
47 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Supergiant +18
  • Star +3
Total score 47

3 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Blazing O-type star · +26
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads O8/O9Ib: — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 7.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Puppis.
  • 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 yellow-white (B−V 0.5) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
  • 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 6200 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
-12.37
bv
0.542
constellation
Pup
luminosity
7726805.851
mag
7.63
name
HD 61827
spect
O8/O9Ib:

About HD 61827

HD 61827 is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Pup, shines at apparent magnitude 7.63 and has spectral type O8/O9Ib:.

Its spectrum reads O8/O9Ib: — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

How to see it

Look for HD 61827 in the constellation Pup. At apparent magnitude 7.63, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 61827 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 61827 is a rare star

HD 61827 scores 47 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Blazing O-type star and Supergiant — 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.