← Back to dex
Common star 20 EP

HD 114444

RA 198.2673° · Dec -75.3138° · star

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

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 642.7 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 B2III — 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 giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 10.3 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Musca.
  • 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out blue-white (B−V -0) — the hallmark of a surface far hotter than the Sun's.
  • 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
-9.69
bv
-0.022
constellation
Mus
luminosity
654636.1741
mag
10.31
name
HD 114444
spect
B2III

About HD 114444

HD 114444 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 10.31 and has spectral type B2III.

Its spectrum reads B2III — 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 114444 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 10.31, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 114444 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 114444 is a common star

HD 114444 scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star, Giant star and Blue-white 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.