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Common star 21 EP

HIP 38540

RA 118.3864° · Dec -28.7353° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Bright giant +12
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 613.8 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 B0II — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 10.4 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 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.

Properties

absmag
-9.64
bv
0.455
constellation
Pup
luminosity
625172.6928
mag
10.36
name
HIP 38540
spect
B0II

About HIP 38540

HIP 38540 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Pup, shines at apparent magnitude 10.36 and has spectral type B0II.

Its spectrum reads B0II — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HIP 38540 in the constellation Pup. At apparent magnitude 10.36, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 38540 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 HIP 38540 is a common star

HIP 38540 scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star and Bright giant — 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.