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Trash star 10 EP

HIP 55590

RA 170.8137° · Dec 67.2529° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
10 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 10

5 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Orange K-type star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 2 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 K0 — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.1 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Ursa Major.
  • 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 orange (B−V 1.3) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 4120 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

What's in a name

  • Its catalogue. The HIP number comes from Hipparcos, the ESA satellite that between 1989 and 1993 pinned down 118,000 stars precisely enough to triangulate their distances.

Properties

absmag
-10.93
bv
1.302
constellation
UMa
luminosity
2051162.1788
mag
9.07
name
HIP 55590
spect
K0

Nearby objects

About HIP 55590

HIP 55590 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 9.07 and has spectral type K0.

Its spectrum reads K0 — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HIP 55590 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 9.07, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 55590 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 55590 is a trash star

HIP 55590 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 Orange K-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.