← Back to dex
Common star 16 EP

HD 142304

RA 238.9295° · Dec -44.5324° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges
16 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 16

6 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B3/B4V — 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.

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 6.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Norma.
  • 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. ≈ 16.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.5 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.468
bv
-0.008
constellation
Nor
dist ly
939.9307
luminosity
134.0294
mag
6.83
name
HD 142304
spect
B3/B4V

About HD 142304

HD 142304 is a common star. It lies about 939.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Nor, shines at apparent magnitude 6.83 and has spectral type B3/B4V.

Its spectrum reads B3/B4V — 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 HD 142304 in the constellation Nor. At apparent magnitude 6.83, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 142304 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 142304 is a common star

HD 142304 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 4 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence star and Blue-white 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.