About HD 76846
HD 76846 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Lyn, shines at apparent magnitude 9.44 and has spectral type R....
Its spectrum reads R... — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.
Trash star 3 EP
HD 76846
RA 134.9539° · Dec 33.7740° · star
Score breakdown
· 1 badgeTrash 15 pts → Common
- Star +3
Total score 3
12 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 1.4 million 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 R... — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 9.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Lynx.
- Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
- Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around February — that's when to go looking.
Its true colour
- Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out orange (B−V 1.4) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
By the numbers
- Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 3970 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
What's in a name
- Its catalogue. The HD number is from the Henry Draper Catalogue, in which Annie Jump Cannon personally classified the spectra of nearly 400,000 stars — still the largest such feat by one person.
Properties
- absmag
- -10.56
- bv
- 1.39
- constellation
- Lyn
- luminosity
- 1458814.2603
- mag
- 9.44
- name
- HD 76846
- spect
- R...
How to see it
Look for HD 76846 in the constellation Lyn. At apparent magnitude 9.44, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, HD 76846 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 76846 is a trash star
HD 76846 scores 3 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 1 science badge — 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.