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Trash star 14 EP

HD 163858

RA 271.5205° · Dec -74.0048° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
14 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Giant star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 14

1 more point to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A2III/IV — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • 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 Apus.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • 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. ≈ 7.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.746
bv
0.157
constellation
Aps
dist ly
444.9603
luminosity
17.4421
mag
7.42
name
HD 163858
spect
A2III/IV

About HD 163858

HD 163858 is a trash star. It lies about 445 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Aps, shines at apparent magnitude 7.42 and has spectral type A2III/IV.

Its spectrum reads A2III/IV — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 163858 in the constellation Aps. At apparent magnitude 7.42, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 163858 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 163858 is a trash star

HD 163858 scores 14 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, White A-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.