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Uncommon star 26 EP

HD 88605

RA 152.8459° · Dec -58.0448° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
26 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Supergiant +18
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 26

8 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 4.5 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 A3Iab — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant. Drop it where the Sun is and its surface would engulf the inner planets.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Carina.
  • 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 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 0.8) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • 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
-11.8
bv
0.826
constellation
Car
luminosity
4570881.8961
mag
8.2
name
HD 88605
spect
A3Iab

About HD 88605

HD 88605 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 8.2 and has spectral type A3Iab.

Its spectrum reads A3Iab — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 88605 in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 8.2, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 88605 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 88605 is an uncommon star

HD 88605 scores 26 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, White A-type star and Supergiant — 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.