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Rare star 34 EP

HIP 46131

RA 141.1100° · Dec 36.7148° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Blazing O-type star · +26
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 717.8 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 sdO: — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.
  • Where it is in life. It is a subdwarf: an old, metal-poor star from the galaxy's early days, a little smaller and fainter than a main-sequence star of the same colour.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 10.2 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Leo Minor.
  • 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 blue-white (B−V -0.3) — the hallmark of a surface far hotter than the Sun's.
  • 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
-9.81
bv
-0.268
constellation
LMi
luminosity
731139.0835
mag
10.19
name
HIP 46131
spect
sdO:

About HIP 46131

HIP 46131 is a rare star. It sits in the constellation LMi, shines at apparent magnitude 10.19 and has spectral type sdO:.

Its spectrum reads sdO: — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

How to see it

Look for HIP 46131 in the constellation LMi. At apparent magnitude 10.19, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 46131 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 46131 is a rare star

HIP 46131 scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Blazing O-type star and Blue-white 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.