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Rare star 40 EP

HR 5661

RA 229.1529° · Dec -60.9040° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B0.5V — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is on the main sequence, quietly fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun does.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 5.7 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Circinus.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around May — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 29.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.821
bv
-0.057
constellation
Cir
dist ly
1681.2164
luminosity
1170.577
mag
5.74
name
HR 5661
spect
B0.5V

About HR 5661

HR 5661 is a rare star. It lies about 1,681.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cir, shines at apparent magnitude 5.74 and has spectral type B0.5V.

Its spectrum reads B0.5V — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HR 5661 in the constellation Cir. At apparent magnitude 5.74, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 5661 is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why HR 5661 is a rare star

HR 5661 scores 40 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence star, Blue-white star and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.