Star profile
Zeta Sculptor
Hot blue starWhat is Zeta Sculptor
Zeta Sculptoris burns at five hundred light-years in the Sculptor, a constellation carved by Lacaille in the eighteenth century to honour the craftsman's workshop. It is a blue B-type star, young and hot, in a sparsely populated and dark region of the sky, far from the bustle of the Milky Way. Its light departs toward us from a southern corner with scarcely any legends to accompany it, only the dust of imagined chiselling.
Where it is and when to see it
Zeta 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, when it culminates around midnight.
- From London it culminates about 9° above the horizon.
- From New York it culminates about 20° above the horizon.
- From Sydney it culminates about 86° above the horizon.
It can be seen from anywhere south of 60° N.
It ranks no. 6 in brightness among the 33 stars of Sculptor in our catalogue. To find it, start from Alpha Sculptor, the brightest: it lies about 12° away (a fist at arm's length covers about 10°).
The light you see today left it about 500 years ago.
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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 Zeta Sculptor
- Constellation
- Sculptor
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.04
- Distance
- 502.6 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 0.583° · Dec -29.720°
- Catalogue
- HIP 183 · HD 224990
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
- Iota Sculptor5.18
- Theta Sculptor5.24
- Pi Sculptor5.25