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Trash star 6 EP

HD 138171

RA 234.1444° · Dec -74.3539° · star

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
6 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 6

9 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F3/F5+... — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

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 8.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Apus.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 534.4 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
3.255
bv
0.687
constellation
Aps
dist ly
342.2414
luminosity
4.3451
mag
8.36
name
HD 138171
spect
F3/F5+...

About HD 138171

HD 138171 is a trash star. It lies about 342.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Aps, shines at apparent magnitude 8.36 and has spectral type F3/F5+....

Its spectrum reads F3/F5+... — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 138171 in the constellation Aps. At apparent magnitude 8.36, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 138171 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 HD 138171 is a trash star

HD 138171 scores 6 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Yellow-white F-type 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.