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Rare star 42 EP

HD 93131

RA 160.9678° · Dec -60.1178° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
42 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself) +34
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 42

8 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself) · +34
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads WN7 + A — a Wolf-Rayet star: a stellar monster shedding its own outer layers in a ferocious wind, on its way to a supernova.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 6.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Carina.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around March — 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) — 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.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 10340 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
-13.55
bv
-0.017
constellation
Car
luminosity
22908676.5277
mag
6.45
name
HD 93131
spect
WN7 + A

About HD 93131

HD 93131 is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 6.45 and has spectral type WN7 + A.

Its spectrum reads WN7 + A — a Wolf-Rayet star: a stellar monster shedding its own outer layers in a ferocious wind, on its way to a supernova.

How to see it

Look for HD 93131 in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 6.45, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 93131 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 93131 is a rare star

HD 93131 scores 42 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Wolf-Rayet star (shedding itself) 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.