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Uncommon variable star 27 EP

5 Ser

RA 229.8283° · Dec 1.7654° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
27 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • A named variable star +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) +2
Total score 27

7 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) · +2
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F8III-IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Inside our stellar backyard: every radio broadcast humanity has ever made has already swept past it.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 5 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Serpens.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Properties

absmag
3.017
bv
0.54
constellation
Ser
dist ly
82.7807
luminosity
5.41
mag
5.04
name
5 Ser
spect
F8III-IV
var amplitude
0.02
var designation
MQ
var max
5.03
var min
5.05

About 5 Ser

5 Ser is an uncommon variable star. It lies about 82.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ser, shines at apparent magnitude 5.04 and has spectral type F8III-IV.

Its spectrum reads F8III-IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for 5 Ser in the constellation Ser. At apparent magnitude 5.04, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 5 Ser 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 5 Ser is an uncommon variable star

5 Ser scores 27 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Variable star, Naked-eye visible, Yellow-white F-type star, Giant star, Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) and A named variable star — 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.