About HD 108773
HD 108773 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Cru, shines at apparent magnitude 6.68 and has spectral type F3II.
Its spectrum reads F3II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
Uncommon star 26 EP
HD 108773
RA 187.5814° · Dec -60.9899° · star
Score breakdown
· 4 badgesUncommon 34 pts → Rare
- Bright giant +12
- Under the Southern Cross +8
- Star +3
- Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 26
8 more points to reach Rare.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Under the Southern Cross · +8
- Yellow-white F-type star · +3
- Bright giant · +12
Trivia
What it actually is
- Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F3II — 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 6.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Crux.
- 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-white (B−V 0.5) — 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 6610 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Properties
- absmag
- -13.32
- bv
- 0.452
- constellation
- Cru
- luminosity
- 18535316.2341
- mag
- 6.68
- name
- HD 108773
- spect
- F3II
How to see it
Look for HD 108773 in the constellation Cru. At apparent magnitude 6.68, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 108773 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 108773 is an uncommon star
HD 108773 scores 26 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Under the Southern Cross, 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.