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Uncommon variable star 23 EP

HD 65987

RA 119.5121° · Dec -60.6148° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
23 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 23

11 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • 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.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

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 Carina.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around January — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 32.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.9 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-1.128
bv
-0.062
constellation
Car
dist ly
1832.3372
luminosity
246.1501
mag
7.62
name
HD 65987
var amplitude
0.07
var designation
V356
var max
7.579
var min
7.649

About HD 65987

HD 65987 is an uncommon variable star. It lies about 1,832.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Car and shines at apparent magnitude 7.62.

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.

How to see it

Look for HD 65987 in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 7.62, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 65987 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 65987 is an uncommon variable star

HD 65987 scores 23 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Blue-white star, 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.