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Rare variable star 46 EP

HD 63099

RA 116.4600° · Dec -34.3301° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
46 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself) +34
  • Variable star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 46

4 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself) · +34
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 544.5 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 WC+... — a Wolf-Rayet star: a stellar monster shedding its own outer layers in a ferocious wind, on its way to a supernova.
  • 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 10.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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 orange (B−V 0.9) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • 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
-9.51
bv
0.93
constellation
Pup
luminosity
554625.713
mag
10.49
name
HD 63099
spect
WC+...
var amplitude
0.11
var designation
V443
var max
10.439
var min
10.549

About HD 63099

HD 63099 is a rare variable star. It sits in the constellation Pup, shines at apparent magnitude 10.49 and has spectral type WC+....

Its spectrum reads WC+... — 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 63099 in the constellation Pup. At apparent magnitude 10.49, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 63099 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 63099 is a rare variable star

HD 63099 scores 46 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Variable star, Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself), 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.