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Rare star 34 EP

3 Pup

RA 115.9519° · Dec -28.9548° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A2Iab — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant. Drop it where the Sun is and its surface would engulf the inner planets.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 3.9 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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 brilliant white (B−V 0.2) — 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 8490 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-16.06
bv
0.16
constellation
Pup
luminosity
231206479.0176
mag
3.94
name
3 Pup
spect
A2Iab

About 3 Pup

3 Pup is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Pup, shines at apparent magnitude 3.94 and has spectral type A2Iab.

Its spectrum reads A2Iab — 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 3 Pup in the constellation Pup. At apparent magnitude 3.94, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 3 Pup 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 3 Pup is a rare star

3 Pup scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, White A-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.