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Common star 18 EP

HD 142172

RA 239.4507° · Dec -68.3391° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K3III — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Triangulum Australe.
  • 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 19.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.349
bv
1.391
constellation
TrA
dist ly
1120.811
luminosity
63.1539
mag
8.03
name
HD 142172
spect
K3III

Nearby objects

About HD 142172

HD 142172 is a common star. It lies about 1,120.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation TrA, shines at apparent magnitude 8.03 and has spectral type K3III.

Its spectrum reads K3III — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 142172 in the constellation TrA. At apparent magnitude 8.03, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 142172 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 142172 is a common star

HD 142172 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 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Orange K-type star and Giant 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.