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Common variable star 18 EP

HD 306797

RA 174.0229° · Dec -61.7017° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 1.2 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 B — 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.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.6 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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
-10.39
bv
0.04
constellation
Cen
luminosity
1247383.5142
mag
9.61
name
HD 306797
spect
B
var amplitude
0.2
var designation
V855
var max
9.511
var min
9.711

About HD 306797

HD 306797 is a common variable star. It sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 9.61 and has spectral type B.

Its spectrum reads B — 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 HD 306797 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 9.61, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 306797 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 306797 is a common variable star

HD 306797 scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Variable star, Hot blue B-type star, Gently variable and A named variable 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.