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Common star 21 EP

HD 151997

RA 252.9617° · Dec -25.5350° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2III/IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 8.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Scorpius.
  • 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. ≈ 33.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.381
bv
0.455
constellation
Sco
dist ly
1929.9172
luminosity
123.7086
mag
8.48
name
HD 151997
spect
F2III/IV

About HD 151997

HD 151997 is a common star. It lies about 1,929.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sco, shines at apparent magnitude 8.48 and has spectral type F2III/IV.

Its spectrum reads F2III/IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 151997 in the constellation Sco. At apparent magnitude 8.48, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 151997 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 151997 is a common star

HD 151997 scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), On the zodiac, Yellow-white F-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.