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Common star 18 EP

HD 140973

RA 237.0061° · Dec -37.6755° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Bright giant +12
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F6II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

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 7.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Lupus.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • 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. ≈ 6.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.06
bv
0.375
constellation
Lup
dist ly
393.9081
luminosity
13.0617
mag
7.47
name
HD 140973
spect
F6II

About HD 140973

HD 140973 is a common star. It lies about 393.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Lup, shines at apparent magnitude 7.47 and has spectral type F6II.

Its spectrum reads F6II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 140973 in the constellation Lup. At apparent magnitude 7.47, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 140973 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 140973 is a common star

HD 140973 scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Bright giant — 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.