About HD 103179
HD 103179 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 8.68 and has spectral type F0/F2III.
Its spectrum reads F0/F2III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Trash star 12 EP
HD 103179
RA 178.1849° · Dec -52.9939° · star
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Giant star +6
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 12
3 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
- Giant star · +6
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 2.9 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 F0/F2III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 8.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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.
Its true colour
- Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out yellow-white (B−V 0.4) — a shade brighter and crisper than our own Sun.
- 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 6870 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Properties
- absmag
- -11.32
- bv
- 0.401
- constellation
- Cen
- luminosity
- 2937649.652
- mag
- 8.68
- name
- HD 103179
- spect
- F0/F2III
How to see it
Look for HD 103179 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 8.68, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 103179 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 103179 is a trash star
HD 103179 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 — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Giant 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.