HD 44506

HD 44506 is a solitary, blue hued star located in the southern constellation Columba. The object is also called HR 2288, which is its Bright Star Catalog designation. It has an average apparent magnitude of 5.52, making it faintly visible to the naked eye under ideal conditions. HD 44506 is located relatively far at a distance of 1,800 light years based on Gaia DR3 parallax measurements but is receding with a heliocentric radial velocity of $$.

Emission lines were first noticed in HD 44506's spectrum in 1964. They were again observed by Karl G. Heinze. It has been suspected to be variable since 1963, but a 1977 search for β Cepheids found inconclusive results; the star is variable in the visual passband but not the ultraviolet passband. As of 2017, the GCVS lists HD 44506 as a suspected variable. In 1982, HD 44506 was officially catalogued as a Be star by Mecerdes Jaschek and Daniel Egret.

This is a hot B-type main-sequence star with a stellar classification of B3 V. It has 12.2 times the mass of the Sun and is estimated to be 13 million years old. HD 44506 has a radius of and an effective temperature of $$. This yields a bolometric luminosity 18,951 times that of the Sun from its photosphere. Like many hot stars it spins rapidly, having a projected rotational velocity of $$.