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Rare star 45 EP

HR 6478

RA 261.8019° · Dec -50.6304° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
45 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 45

5 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B9II — 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 bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

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 5.9 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 52.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-3.893
bv
0.063
constellation
Ara
dist ly
2965.0545
luminosity
3141.9553
mag
5.9
name
HR 6478
spect
B9II

About HR 6478

HR 6478 is a rare star. It lies about 2,965.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ara, shines at apparent magnitude 5.9 and has spectral type B9II.

Its spectrum reads B9II — 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 HR 6478 in the constellation Ara. At apparent magnitude 5.9, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 6478 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 HR 6478 is a rare star

HR 6478 scores 45 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Hot blue B-type star, Bright giant and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.