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Common star 16 EP

HR 5900

RA 238.8850° · Dec -60.1776° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
16 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 16

6 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • White A-type star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads Amvar — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • 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 5.8 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Norma.
  • 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. ≈ 2.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.231
bv
0.355
constellation
Nor
dist ly
167.1739
luminosity
11.1584
mag
5.78
name
HR 5900
spect
Amvar

About HR 5900

HR 5900 is a common star. It lies about 167.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Nor, shines at apparent magnitude 5.78 and has spectral type Amvar.

Its spectrum reads Amvar — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HR 5900 in the constellation Nor. At apparent magnitude 5.78, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 5900 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 5900 is a common star

HR 5900 scores 16 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible and White A-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.