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Uncommon star 26 EP

HD 166138

RA 272.8662° · Dec -44.5861° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
26 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Bright giant +12
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 26

8 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B5II — 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 bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

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 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Corona Australis.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 17.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.723
bv
-0.096
constellation
CrA
dist ly
997.419
luminosity
44.7507
mag
8.15
name
HD 166138
spect
B5II

About HD 166138

HD 166138 is an uncommon star. It lies about 997.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation CrA, shines at apparent magnitude 8.15 and has spectral type B5II.

Its spectrum reads B5II — 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 166138 in the constellation CrA. At apparent magnitude 8.15, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 166138 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 166138 is an uncommon star

HD 166138 scores 26 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star, Bright giant 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.