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Rare star 34 EP

HR 4541

RA 177.6137° · Dec -62.6494° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A3Iab — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • 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 5.7 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out brilliant white (B−V 0.2) — 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.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 7920 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-14.32
bv
0.233
constellation
Cen
luminosity
46558609.3523
mag
5.68
name
HR 4541
spect
A3Iab

About HR 4541

HR 4541 is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 5.68 and has spectral type A3Iab.

Its spectrum reads A3Iab — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HR 4541 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 5.68, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 4541 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 HR 4541 is a rare star

HR 4541 scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, White A-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.