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Epic variable star 63 EP

Hadar

RA 210.9559° · Dec -60.3730° · star

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Score breakdown

· 9 badges
63 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Brilliant (mag < 1) +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • A named variable star +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) +2
Total score 63

15 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Brilliant (mag < 1) · +18
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) · +2
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B1III — 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.
  • 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 0.6 it is one of the brightest points in the night sky — impossible to miss, 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Properties

absmag
-4.789
bv
-0.231
constellation
Cen
dist ly
392.0144
luminosity
7171.3348
mag
0.61
name
Hadar
named
yes
spect
B1III
var amplitude
0.04
var designation
Bet
var max
0.594
var min
0.634

About Hadar

Hadar is an epic variable star. It lies about 392 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 0.61 and has spectral type B1III.

Its spectrum reads B1III — 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 Hadar in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 0.61, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Hadar 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 Hadar is an epic variable star

Hadar scores 63 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 9 science badges — Variable star, Brilliant (mag < 1), Has a proper name, Hot blue B-type star, Giant star, Blue-white star, Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) and Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) — 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.