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Rare variable star 39 EP

HIP 50581

RA 154.9859° · Dec -8.6989° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • White dwarf (a burnt-out core) +22
  • Variable star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • White dwarf (a burnt-out core) · +22
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 432.5 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 DAe — a white dwarf — the exposed, Earth-sized cinder of a dead star, with nothing left to burn.
  • 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 10.7 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Sextans.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • 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 -0.1) — 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
-9.26
bv
-0.098
constellation
Sex
luminosity
440554.8635
mag
10.74
name
HIP 50581
spect
DAe
var amplitude
0.3
var designation
RW
var max
10.549
var min
10.849

Nearby objects

About HIP 50581

HIP 50581 is a rare variable star. It sits in the constellation Sex, shines at apparent magnitude 10.74 and has spectral type DAe.

Its spectrum reads DAe — a white dwarf — the exposed, Earth-sized cinder of a dead star, with nothing left to burn.

How to see it

Look for HIP 50581 in the constellation Sex. At apparent magnitude 10.74, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 50581 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 50581 is a rare variable star

HIP 50581 scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, White dwarf (a burnt-out core), 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.