Star profile
HIP 52742
Hot blue starWhat is HIP 52742
In Vela —the sail of the ancient ship Argo— blazes a blue-white B-class star whose light departed around 1500, when Pedro Álvares Cabral first set foot on the coast of Brazil. Its surface, tens of thousands of degrees hotter than the Sun's, radiates a fierce glacial glare. A companion of the deep southern sky, it is one of those massive, short-lived stars that live quickly and leave a luminous trail far out of scale with their age.
Where it is and when to see it
HIP 52742 lies in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is April: 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 HIP 52742
- Constellation
- Vela
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.14
- Distance
- 526.1 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 161.740° · Dec -56.757°
- Catalogue
- HIP 52742 · HD 93563
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Vela
Vela has 127 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- Gamma 2 Velorum1.75
- AlsephinaDelta Velorum1.93
- SuhailLambda Velorum2.23
- HIP 455055.12
- HIP 469145.12
- HIP 402855.14
- HIP 428345.15
- HIP 440935.17