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Trash variable star 12 EP

HIP 57844

RA 177.9295° · Dec -39.2075° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
12 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Variable star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 12

3 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 586.1 thousand times as much light as the Sun. It only looks ordinary because it is so far away.

What it actually is

  • 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 10.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Centaurus.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around March — that's when to go looking.

What's in a name

  • Its catalogue. The HIP number comes from Hipparcos, the ESA satellite that between 1989 and 1993 pinned down 118,000 stars precisely enough to triangulate their distances.

How we came to know it

  • Cosmic yardstick. Variable stars are how we measured the universe. In 1912 Henrietta Leavitt showed that a pulsating star's rhythm reveals its true brightness — turning these stars into distance markers.

Properties

absmag
-9.59
constellation
Cen
luminosity
597035.2866
mag
10.41
name
HIP 57844
var amplitude
0.43
var designation
V572
var max
10.205
var min
10.635

About HIP 57844

HIP 57844 is a trash variable star. It sits in the constellation Cen and shines at apparent magnitude 10.41.

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.

How to see it

Look for HIP 57844 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 10.41, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 57844 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 HIP 57844 is a trash variable star

HIP 57844 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Variable 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.