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Common star 21 EP

HD 119814

RA 206.7618° · Dec -58.0711° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Bright giant +12
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 1.8 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 B8/B9II — 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.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9.2 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Centaurus.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • 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 brilliant white (B−V 0.1) — hotter and whiter than the Sun, the colour of Sirius or Vega.
  • 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.

By the numbers

  • Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 9060 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.

Properties

absmag
-10.82
bv
0.097
constellation
Cen
luminosity
1853531.6234
mag
9.18
name
HD 119814
spect
B8/B9II

About HD 119814

HD 119814 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 9.18 and has spectral type B8/B9II.

Its spectrum reads B8/B9II — 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 119814 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 9.18, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 119814 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 119814 is a common star

HD 119814 scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star and Bright giant — 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.