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Rare star 40 EP

HR 6197

RA 250.7649° · Dec -46.0703° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5Iab — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant. Drop it where the Sun is and its surface would engulf the inner planets.

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 6.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Ara.
  • 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 June — 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. ≈ 49.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-3.477
bv
0.821
constellation
Ara
dist ly
2836.1391
luminosity
2141.904
mag
6.22
name
HR 6197
spect
F5Iab

About HR 6197

HR 6197 is a rare star. It lies about 2,836.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ara, shines at apparent magnitude 6.22 and has spectral type F5Iab.

Its spectrum reads F5Iab — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HR 6197 in the constellation Ara. At apparent magnitude 6.22, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 6197 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 6197 is a rare star

HR 6197 scores 40 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star, Supergiant and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.