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Epic star 61 EP

Iot1Sco

RA 266.8962° · Dec -40.1270° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
61 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Blindingly luminous (Mv < −5) +20
  • Supergiant +18
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 61

17 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Blindingly luminous (Mv < −5) · +20

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 19.1 thousand times as much light as the Sun. It only looks ordinary because it is so far away.

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F3Ia — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a luminous supergiant — among the largest and rarest stars in the galaxy.

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 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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.

Properties

absmag
-5.871
bv
0.509
constellation
Sco
dist ly
1929.9172
luminosity
19426.7432
mag
2.99
name
Iot1Sco
spect
F3Ia

About Iot1Sco

Iot1Sco is an epic star. It lies about 1,929.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sco, shines at apparent magnitude 2.99 and has spectral type F3Ia.

Its spectrum reads F3Ia — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for Iot1Sco in the constellation Sco. At apparent magnitude 2.99, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Iot1Sco 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 Iot1Sco is an epic star

Iot1Sco scores 61 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 17 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, On the zodiac, Yellow-white F-type star, Supergiant and Blindingly luminous (Mv < −5) — 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.