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Rare star 36 EP

HD 161649

RA 267.0469° · Dec -34.5819° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
36 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 36

14 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
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8/B9Ib/II — 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.

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 7.8 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. ≈ 26.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.4 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.548
bv
0.101
constellation
Sco
dist ly
1509.9816
luminosity
144.278
mag
7.78
name
HD 161649
spect
B8/B9Ib/II

About HD 161649

HD 161649 is a rare star. It lies about 1,510 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sco, shines at apparent magnitude 7.78 and has spectral type B8/B9Ib/II.

Its spectrum reads B8/B9Ib/II — 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 161649 in the constellation Sco. At apparent magnitude 7.78, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 161649 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 161649 is a rare star

HD 161649 scores 36 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 14 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), On the zodiac, Hot blue B-type star and Supergiant — 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.