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Rare variable star 39 EP

HD 115514

RA 199.7429° · Dec -62.3823° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Gently variable +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F8Ib-II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant, hundreds of times wider than the Sun.
  • 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 8.4 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.

Properties

absmag
-1.517
bv
0.94
constellation
Cen
dist ly
3197.608
luminosity
352.2086
mag
8.44
name
HD 115514
spect
F8Ib-II
var amplitude
0.38
var designation
V378
var max
8.224
var min
8.604

About HD 115514

HD 115514 is a rare variable star. It lies about 3,197.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 8.44 and has spectral type F8Ib-II.

Its spectrum reads F8Ib-II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 115514 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 8.44, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 115514 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 115514 is a rare variable star

HD 115514 scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-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.