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Rare star 37 EP

HD 164455

RA 270.6788° · Dec -33.8892° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
37 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Toward the galactic centre +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 37

13 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Toward the galactic centre · +8
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B2III/IV — 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 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 7.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Sagittarius.
  • 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. ≈ 37 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-1.618
bv
-0.086
constellation
Sgr
dist ly
2104.2323
luminosity
386.5449
mag
7.43
name
HD 164455
spect
B2III/IV

About HD 164455

HD 164455 is a rare star. It lies about 2,104.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sgr, shines at apparent magnitude 7.43 and has spectral type B2III/IV.

Its spectrum reads B2III/IV — 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 164455 in the constellation Sgr. At apparent magnitude 7.43, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 164455 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 164455 is a rare star

HD 164455 scores 37 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Toward the galactic centre, On the zodiac, Hot blue B-type star, Giant star and Blue-white 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.