Uncommon star 23 EP

HD 166484

RA 273.0560° · Dec -32.2816° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges

23 pts · Uncommon

Uncommon 34 pts → Rare

Toward the galactic centre +8
Giant star +6
Star +3
On the zodiac +3
Orange K-type star +3

Total score 23

11 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

Star · +3
Toward the galactic centre · +8
On the zodiac · +3
Orange K-type star · +3
Giant star · +6

Trivia

Hard to believe

True brightness. It pours out about 3.4 million times as much light as the Sun. It only looks ordinary because it is so far away.

What it actually is

Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K1III+... — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.
Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

Find it in the sky

How to spot it. At magnitude 8.5 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.

Its true colour

Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out yellow (B−V 0.8) — almost exactly the Sun's own shade — a stellar twin in colour, if not in size.
Why no green stars. No star ever looks green: a surface hot enough to peak in green also floods out plenty of red and blue, and your eye blends the mixture back to white.

Properties

absmag: -11.51
bv: 0.8
constellation: Sgr
luminosity: 3499451.6703
mag: 8.49
name: HD 166484
spect: K1III+...

Nearby objects

About HD 166484

HD 166484 is an uncommon star. It sits in the constellation Sgr, shines at apparent magnitude 8.49 and has spectral type K1III+....

Its spectrum reads K1III+... — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 166484 in the constellation Sgr. At apparent magnitude 8.49, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 166484 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 166484 is an uncommon star

HD 166484 scores 23 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Toward the galactic centre, On the zodiac, Orange K-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.