← Back to dex
Common star 20 EP

55Xi Ser

RA 264.3967° · Dec -15.3986° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0IIIp — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 3.5 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Serpens.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 1.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.995
bv
0.262
constellation
Ser
dist ly
105.2796
luminosity
34.8337
mag
3.54
name
55Xi Ser
spect
F0IIIp

About 55Xi Ser

55Xi Ser is a common star. It lies about 105.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ser, shines at apparent magnitude 3.54 and has spectral type F0IIIp.

Its spectrum reads F0IIIp — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for 55Xi Ser in the constellation Ser. At apparent magnitude 3.54, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 55Xi Ser 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 55Xi Ser is a common star

55Xi Ser scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Yellow-white F-type star and Giant 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.