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Rare star 40 EP

Aldhibah

RA 257.1967° · Dec 65.7147° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B6III — 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.
  • 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 3.2 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Draco.
  • 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. ≈ 5.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-1.845
bv
-0.12
constellation
Dra
dist ly
328.4551
luminosity
476.431
mag
3.17
name
Aldhibah
named
yes
spect
B6III

About Aldhibah

Aldhibah is a rare star. It lies about 328.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 3.17 and has spectral type B6III.

Its spectrum reads B6III — 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 Aldhibah in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 3.17, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Aldhibah 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 Aldhibah is a rare star

Aldhibah scores 40 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Has a proper name, Never sets (northern circumpolar), 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.