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Common star 20 EP

HD 151688

RA 253.0375° · Dec -57.5803° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B4/B5III — 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.

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 7.1 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 16.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.5 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.184
bv
-0.057
constellation
Ara
dist ly
950.8922
luminosity
103.1811
mag
7.14
name
HD 151688
spect
B4/B5III

About HD 151688

HD 151688 is a common star. It lies about 950.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ara, shines at apparent magnitude 7.14 and has spectral type B4/B5III.

Its spectrum reads B4/B5III — 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 151688 in the constellation Ara. At apparent magnitude 7.14, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 151688 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 151688 is a common star

HD 151688 scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star, Giant star and Blue-white 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.