Beta Sculptoris, a blue-white giant star in Sculptor
Beta Sculptoris is a blue-white giant star in the constellation Sculptor. At 183 light years away, it shines at an apparent visual magnitude of 4.37.
Beta Sculptoris (HIP 116231)
Beta Sculptoris is a blue-white giant star in the constellation Sculptor. At 183 light years away, it shines at an apparent visual magnitude of 4.37. It is moving through the Galaxy at a speed of 25.0 km/s relative to the Sun.
Sky position: RA 23h 33.0m, Dec -37° 49.1'
Common designations: Beta Sculptoris, HR 8937, HD 221507, HIP 116231, Gaia DR3 6538585991555664128
Beta Sculptoris has the spectral type B9.5IIIpHgMnSi. B-type stars are hot (about 10,000 to 30,000 K), luminous and blue-white. They are massive, short-lived stars, typically only tens of millions of years old, and are common in young clusters and OB associations. Its luminosity class III marks it as a giant: an evolved star that has left the main sequence and swollen to many times its original size.
How to find Beta Sculptoris in the sky
Beta Sculptoris lies in Sculptor. With a declination of -37° 49.1', it is visible from the entire Southern Hemisphere and from the Northern Hemisphere up to about latitude 52° N. Observers poleward of latitude 52° S see it as circumpolar: it never sets. It is bright enough to see with the naked eye under dark skies. It is highest in the sky at local midnight around October, which makes the weeks around that month the best time to observe it.
Tabulated data for Beta Sculptoris
Astrometry and spectroscopy
| Right Ascension (J2000) | 353.24275293° (23h 33.0m) |
| Declination (J2000) | -37.81828488° (-37° 49.1') |
| Galactic Longitude | 355.03976110° |
| Galactic Latitude | -70.36279796° |
| Proper motion RA | 90.31 mas/yr |
| Proper motion Dec | 24.09 mas/yr |
| Parallax | 17.81 ± 0.21 mas |
| Spectral Type | B9.5IIIpHgMnSi |
| Radial Velocity | 2.15 km/s |
Photometry
| Band | Magnitude | Abs. Mag. |
|---|---|---|
| U | 3.92 | 0.17 |
| B | 4.28 | 0.53 |
| V | 4.37 | 0.62 |
| R | 4.37 | 0.62 |
| I | 4.44 | 0.69 |
| J | 4.63 | 0.88 |
| H | 4.67 | 0.92 |
| K | 4.61 | 0.86 |
Colour index B-V: -0.09
Derivations
- Heliocentric distance: 56.16 pc (183 light years) (1.2% margin of error)
- Absolute visual magnitude: 0.62
- Transverse velocity: 24.9 km/s
- Space velocity relative to the Sun: 25.0 km/s
- Galactic position (X, Y, Z): 18.8 pc, -1.6 pc, -52.9 pc
- Galactic velocity (U, V, W): -22.6 km/s, -3.4 km/s, -10.2 km/s
Data: Extended Hipparcos Compilation (XHIP) and SIMBAD.