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Common star 18 EP

HD 166252

RA 273.6419° · Dec -65.1991° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Bright giant +12
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 7.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Pavo.
  • 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. ≈ 9.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.924
bv
0.372
constellation
Pav
dist ly
516.0695
luminosity
14.8047
mag
7.92
name
HD 166252
spect
F0II

About HD 166252

HD 166252 is a common star. It lies about 516.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Pav, shines at apparent magnitude 7.92 and has spectral type F0II.

Its spectrum reads F0II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 166252 in the constellation Pav. At apparent magnitude 7.92, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 166252 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 166252 is a common star

HD 166252 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 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Bright giant — 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.