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Rare star 44 EP

Lam Cen

RA 173.9454° · Dec -63.0198° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
44 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 44

6 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B9II: — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 3.1 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Centaurus.
  • 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.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 7.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.438
bv
-0.044
constellation
Cen
dist ly
419.7631
luminosity
822.6214
mag
3.11
name
Lam Cen
spect
B9II:

About Lam Cen

Lam Cen is a rare star. It lies about 419.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 3.11 and has spectral type B9II:.

Its spectrum reads B9II: — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for Lam Cen in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 3.11, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Lam Cen 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 Lam Cen is a rare star

Lam Cen scores 44 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Hot blue B-type star, Bright giant, Blue-white star and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.