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Rare star 40 EP

HD 116852

RA 202.5979° · Dec -78.8557° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Blazing O-type star · +26
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 3.4 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 O9III — 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Chamaeleon.
  • 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 -0.1) — 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
-11.51
bv
-0.1
constellation
Cha
luminosity
3499451.6703
mag
8.49
name
HD 116852
spect
O9III

About HD 116852

HD 116852 is a rare star. It sits in the constellation Cha, shines at apparent magnitude 8.49 and has spectral type O9III.

Its spectrum reads O9III — 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 116852 in the constellation Cha. At apparent magnitude 8.49, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 116852 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 116852 is a rare star

HD 116852 scores 40 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Blazing O-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.