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Uncommon variable star 29 EP

HD 104191

RA 179.9730° · Dec -69.8847° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8/B9IV/V — 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.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

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 Musca.
  • 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.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 20.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.989
bv
0.106
constellation
Mus
dist ly
1190.3504
luminosity
35.0268
mag
8.8
name
HD 104191
spect
B8/B9IV/V
var amplitude
0.21
var designation
DZ
var max
8.772
var min
8.982

About HD 104191

HD 104191 is an uncommon variable star. It lies about 1,190.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 8.8 and has spectral type B8/B9IV/V.

Its spectrum reads B8/B9IV/V — 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 104191 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 8.8, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 104191 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 104191 is an uncommon variable star

HD 104191 scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-type star, Subgiant (leaving the main sequence), 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.