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Epic variable star 50 EP

HD 112272

RA 194.1406° · Dec -64.3609° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
50 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Supergiant +18
  • Under the Southern Cross +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 50

28 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Under the Southern Cross · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B0.5Ia — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is a luminous supergiant — among the largest and rarest stars in the galaxy.
  • 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 7.3 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 April — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

absmag
-1.929
bv
0.687
constellation
Cru
dist ly
2329.6857
luminosity
514.7543
mag
7.34
name
HD 112272
spect
B0.5Ia
var amplitude
0.09
var designation
DW
var max
7.295
var min
7.385

About HD 112272

HD 112272 is an epic variable star. It lies about 2,329.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cru, shines at apparent magnitude 7.34 and has spectral type B0.5Ia.

Its spectrum reads B0.5Ia — 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 112272 in the constellation Cru. At apparent magnitude 7.34, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 112272 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 112272 is an epic variable star

HD 112272 scores 50 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 28 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Under the Southern Cross, Hot blue B-type star, Supergiant, 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.