About HIP 53552
HIP 53552 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 9.5 and has spectral type F2.
Its spectrum reads F2 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Trash star 10 EP
HIP 53552
RA 164.3313° · Dec 73.1564° · star
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 10
5 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
- Yellow-white F-type 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 F2 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 9.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Draco.
- Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
- 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 yellow-white (B−V 0.4) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
- 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 7030 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Properties
- absmag
- -10.5
- bv
- 0.372
- constellation
- Dra
- luminosity
- 1380384.2646
- mag
- 9.5
- name
- HIP 53552
- spect
- F2
How to see it
Look for HIP 53552 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 9.5, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 53552 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 53552 is a trash star
HIP 53552 scores 10 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Yellow-white F-type 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.