Star profile
Iota Sculptor
What is Iota Sculptor
Iota Sculptoris is an orange K-type giant lying some 330 light-years away, in the discreet Sculptor —a constellation Lacaille drew in the eighteenth century in honour of an artist's workshop—. It is an ageing sun that has exhausted the hydrogen in its core and swollen into a warm, ruddy beacon, suspended in a southern region of the sky scattered with distant galaxies.
Where it is and when to see it
Iota Sculptor lies in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is September: the Sun sits at the opposite point of the sky and the star culminates around midnight. How high it climbs above the horizon depends on the latitude you watch from.
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The signature wall
Stelvia's sky works like a signature wall: anyone can leave their name and a message on a real star, and that signature goes up on the map for everyone to read. Signing is free.
A signature without a lock can be replaced by someone else's. The lock makes the signature permanent and lets you choose a symbolic name for the star, always shown next to the star's catalogue identifier. How the lock works
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A public signature from a real person. The chosen name is a symbolic denomination within Stelvia, with no official standing or IAU recognition: the sky is not for sale and belongs to no one.
Astronomical data for Iota Sculptor
- Constellation
- Sculptor
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.18
- Distance
- 330.5 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 5.380° · Dec -28.981°
- Catalogue
- HIP 1708 · HD 1737
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Sculptor
Sculptor has 33 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- Alpha Sculptor4.30
- Beta Sculptor4.38
- Gamma Sculptor4.41
- Delta Sculptor4.59
- Eta Sculptor4.86
- Zeta Sculptor5.04
- Theta Sculptor5.24
- Pi Sculptor5.25