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Trash star 14 EP

HD 116909

RA 202.2870° · Dec -71.4691° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
14 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Deep red star +8
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 14

1 more point to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Deep red star · +8

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 2.1 million 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 K3: — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9 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 deep orange-red (B−V 1.7) — one of the coolest surfaces a star can have while still fusing.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 3470 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

What's in a name

  • Its catalogue. The HD number is from the Henry Draper Catalogue, in which Annie Jump Cannon personally classified the spectra of nearly 400,000 stars — still the largest such feat by one person.

Properties

absmag
-10.96
bv
1.736
constellation
Mus
luminosity
2108628.1499
mag
9.04
name
HD 116909
spect
K3:

Nearby objects

About HD 116909

HD 116909 is a trash star. It sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 9.04 and has spectral type K3:.

Its spectrum reads K3: — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 116909 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 9.04, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 116909 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 116909 is a trash star

HD 116909 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, Orange K-type star and Deep red 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.