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Rare star 40 EP

HD 158859

RA 263.2751° · Dec -33.0578° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B2II — 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 7.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Scorpius.
  • 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. ≈ 43.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.111
bv
0.127
constellation
Sco
dist ly
2452.3008
luminosity
608.6954
mag
7.27
name
HD 158859
spect
B2II

About HD 158859

HD 158859 is a rare star. It lies about 2,452.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sco, shines at apparent magnitude 7.27 and has spectral type B2II.

Its spectrum reads B2II — 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 158859 in the constellation Sco. At apparent magnitude 7.27, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 158859 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 158859 is a rare star

HD 158859 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 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), On the zodiac, 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.