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Uncommon star 24 EP

21Mu Dra

RA 256.3339° · Dec 54.4700° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
24 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Binary star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Binary star · +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Not one star but two. It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Inside our stellar backyard: every radio broadcast humanity has ever made has already swept past it.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 4.9 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Draco.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 1.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.718
binary
yes
bv
0.471
constellation
Dra
dist ly
89.4802
luminosity
7.1252
mag
4.91
name
21Mu Dra
spect
F5

About 21Mu Dra

21Mu Dra is an uncommon star. It lies about 89.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 4.91 and has spectral type F5.

It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

How to see it

Look for 21Mu Dra in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 4.91, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 21Mu Dra 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 21Mu Dra is an uncommon star

21Mu Dra scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Binary star, Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Yellow-white F-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.