← Back to dex
Rare star 41 EP

HD 112784

RA 195.0235° · Dec -60.5937° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges
41 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 41

9 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Blazing O-type star · +26
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads O9.5III — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 8.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Centaurus.
  • 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.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 36.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.737
bv
0.054
constellation
Cen
dist ly
2064.2785
luminosity
171.7117
mag
8.27
name
HD 112784
spect
O9.5III

About HD 112784

HD 112784 is a rare star. It lies about 2,064.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 8.27 and has spectral type O9.5III.

Its spectrum reads O9.5III — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

How to see it

Look for HD 112784 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 8.27, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 112784 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 112784 is a rare star

HD 112784 scores 41 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Blazing O-type star and Giant 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.