← Back to dex
Trash star 10 EP

HD 102881

RA 177.7695° · Dec 71.1106° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

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 2.7 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 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 8.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Draco.
  • 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 0.9) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • 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 4890 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-11.25
bv
0.941
constellation
Dra
luminosity
2754228.7033
mag
8.75
name
HD 102881
spect
K0

Nearby objects

About HD 102881

HD 102881 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 8.75 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 HD 102881 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 8.75, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 102881 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 102881 is a trash star

HD 102881 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.