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Trash star 14 EP

HD 114251

RA 197.6265° · Dec -60.8521° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
14 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Giant star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 14

1 more point to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A9IIIw... — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • 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 8.7 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 14.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.613
bv
0.325
constellation
Cen
dist ly
844.9639
luminosity
19.7151
mag
8.68
name
HD 114251
spect
A9IIIw...

Nearby objects

About HD 114251

HD 114251 is a trash star. It lies about 845 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 8.68 and has spectral type A9IIIw....

Its spectrum reads A9IIIw... — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 114251 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 8.68, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 114251 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 114251 is a trash star

HD 114251 scores 14 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, White A-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.