About HD 104651
HD 104651 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 8.28 and has spectral type F6II.
Its spectrum reads F6II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Common star 18 EP
HD 104651
RA 180.7511° · Dec -65.7152° · star
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesCommon 22 pts → Uncommon
- Bright giant +12
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 18
4 more points to reach Uncommon.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
- Bright giant · +12
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 4.2 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 F6II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
- Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 8.3 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.
Its true colour
- Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out yellow (B−V 0.7) — almost exactly the Sun's own shade — a stellar twin in colour, if not in size.
- 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.
Properties
- absmag
- -11.72
- bv
- 0.658
- constellation
- Mus
- luminosity
- 4246195.6395
- mag
- 8.28
- name
- HD 104651
- spect
- F6II
How to see it
Look for HD 104651 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 8.28, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 104651 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 104651 is a common star
HD 104651 scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Bright giant — 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.