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Rare star 36 EP

50 Her

RA 252.6623° · Dec 29.8065° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
36 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Deep red star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Cool red M-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 36

14 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Cool red M-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6
  • Deep red star · +8

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads M1III — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.
  • 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 5.7 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Hercules.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north 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. ≈ 18.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-1.849
bv
1.626
constellation
Her
dist ly
1069.3641
luminosity
478.1895
mag
5.73
name
50 Her
spect
M1III

About 50 Her

50 Her is a rare star. It lies about 1,069.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Her, shines at apparent magnitude 5.73 and has spectral type M1III.

Its spectrum reads M1III — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.

How to see it

Look for 50 Her in the constellation Her. At apparent magnitude 5.73, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 50 Her 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 50 Her is a rare star

50 Her scores 36 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 14 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Cool red M-type star, Giant star and Deep red 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.