About HD 74298
HD 74298 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Pyx, shines at apparent magnitude 7.8 and has spectral type F0III.
Its spectrum reads F0III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Trash star 12 EP
HD 74298
RA 130.6401° · Dec -22.3862° · star
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Giant star +6
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 12
3 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
- Giant star · +6
Trivia
What it actually is
- Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
- Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 7.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Pyxis.
- 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 0.3) — 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 7490 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Properties
- absmag
- -12.2
- bv
- 0.296
- constellation
- Pyx
- luminosity
- 6606934.4801
- mag
- 7.8
- name
- HD 74298
- spect
- F0III
How to see it
Look for HD 74298 in the constellation Pyx. At apparent magnitude 7.8, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 74298 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 74298 is a trash star
HD 74298 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Giant 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.