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Common star 18 EP

HD 170151

RA 272.5423° · Dec 82.9398° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B9 — 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 7.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Draco.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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. ≈ 12.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.1 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
0.758
bv
-0.107
constellation
Dra
dist ly
704.4405
luminosity
43.3311
mag
7.43
name
HD 170151
spect
B9

About HD 170151

HD 170151 is a common star. It lies about 704.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 7.43 and has spectral type B9.

Its spectrum reads B9 — 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 170151 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 7.43, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 170151 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 170151 is a common star

HD 170151 scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type 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.