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Uncommon star 26 EP

HD 100840

RA 173.9463° · Dec -61.5605° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
26 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Supergiant +18
  • Cool red M-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 26

8 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Cool red M-type star · +5
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 4.7 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 M0Iab — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant. Drop it where the Sun is and its surface would engulf the inner planets.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out brilliant white (B−V 0) — hotter and whiter than the Sun, the colour of Sirius or Vega.
  • 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
-11.84
bv
0
constellation
Cen
luminosity
4742419.8526
mag
8.16
name
HD 100840
spect
M0Iab

About HD 100840

HD 100840 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 8.16 and has spectral type M0Iab.

Its spectrum reads M0Iab — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.

How to see it

Look for HD 100840 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 8.16, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 100840 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 100840 is an uncommon star

HD 100840 scores 26 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Cool red M-type star and Supergiant — 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.