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Common star 18 EP

HD 168393

RA 274.9672° · Dec -11.2875° · 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 F5II — 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 7.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Serpens.
  • 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. ≈ 5.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.445
bv
0.552
constellation
Ser
dist ly
319.4476
luminosity
9.1622
mag
7.4
name
HD 168393
spect
F5II

About HD 168393

HD 168393 is a common star. It lies about 319.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ser, shines at apparent magnitude 7.4 and has spectral type F5II.

Its spectrum reads F5II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 168393 in the constellation Ser. At apparent magnitude 7.4, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 168393 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 168393 is a common star

HD 168393 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.