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Common star 15 EP

HD 147889

RA 246.3513° · Dec -24.4657° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
15 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 15

7 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B2III/IV — 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.
  • 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 7.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Ophiuchus.
  • 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. ≈ 6.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.519
bv
0.759
constellation
Oph
dist ly
385.0722
luminosity
8.5585
mag
7.88
name
HD 147889
spect
B2III/IV

About HD 147889

HD 147889 is a common star. It lies about 385.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Oph, shines at apparent magnitude 7.88 and has spectral type B2III/IV.

Its spectrum reads B2III/IV — 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 147889 in the constellation Oph. At apparent magnitude 7.88, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 147889 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 147889 is a common star

HD 147889 scores 15 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-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.