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Trash star 12 EP

HD 156401

RA 253.3707° · Dec 84.7644° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
12 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • White A-type star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 12

3 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • White A-type star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A0 — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

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 Ursa Minor.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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. ≈ 10.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 953.7 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
1.538
bv
0.179
constellation
UMi
dist ly
610.779
luminosity
21.1252
mag
7.9
name
HD 156401
spect
A0

About HD 156401

HD 156401 is a trash star. It lies about 610.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMi, shines at apparent magnitude 7.9 and has spectral type A0.

Its spectrum reads A0 — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 156401 in the constellation UMi. At apparent magnitude 7.9, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 156401 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 156401 is a trash star

HD 156401 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar) and White A-type 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.