Uncommon variable star 25 EP

HIP 59946

RA 184.4444° · Dec 69.5106° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges

25 pts · Uncommon

Uncommon 34 pts → Rare

Strongly variable +10
Variable star +5
Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Yellow-white F-type star +3
A named variable star +3

Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

Variable star · +5
Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
Yellow-white F-type star · +3
Strongly variable · +10
A named variable star · +3

Trivia

Hard to believe

True brightness. It pours out about 501.2 thousand 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 F2.5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
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 10.6 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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 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.

Properties

absmag: -9.42
bv: 0.411
constellation: Dra
luminosity: 510505
mag: 10.58
name: HIP 59946
spect: F2.5
var amplitude: 0.89
var designation: SW
var max: 9.988
var min: 10.878

Nearby objects

About HIP 59946

HIP 59946 is an uncommon variable star. It sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 10.58 and has spectral type F2.5.

Its spectrum reads F2.5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HIP 59946 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 10.58, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 59946 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 59946 is an uncommon variable star

HIP 59946 scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star, Strongly 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.