EC 20058-5234 (QU Telescopii), is a

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

Telescopium Telescopium is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, one of twelve named in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. Its name is a Latinized form ...

. With an

apparent magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's li ...

of 15.03, it's impossible to detect with the

naked eye Naked eye, also called bare eye or unaided eye, is the practice of engaging in visual perception unaided by a magnifying, light-collecting optical instrument, such as a telescope or microscope, or eye protection. Vision corrected to normal ...

and requires a powerful telescope to be seen; this degenerate object is located 388

light years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

from the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...

based on

parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening, nearby objects ...

. QU Telescopii has a classification of DB2, which states it's a

white dwarf A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes fro ...

with He I lines present in its atmosphere. At the moment, it has 56.9% the

mass of the Sun The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass ...

, but a high surface gravity suggests QU Telescopii has a low radius. It has an

effective temperature The effective temperature of a body such as a star or planet is the temperature of a black body that would emit the same total amount of electromagnetic radiation. Effective temperature is often used as an estimate of a body's surface temperature ...

of 24,843 K, which gives it a blue hue as opposed to a white hue. QU Telescopii belongs to a class of stars known as V777 Herculis variables or DBV stars. First noticed in the

Edinburgh-Cape Blue Object Survey The Edinburgh-Cape Blue Object Survey (or EC in astronomical notation)C. Aerts, J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, D. W. Kurtz, ''Asteroseismology'' (2010), p. 105. is a major astronomical survey to discover blue stellar objects brighter than B~18 in the so ...

published in 1992, it was found to be variable in 1995.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:EC 20058-5234 Telescopium Pulsating white dwarfs Telescopii, QU White dwarfs