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Uncommon star 32 EP

HD 168814

RA 275.5666° · Dec -14.3887° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Supergiant +18
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A1Ib — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant, hundreds of times wider than the Sun.

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 7.1 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Scutum.
  • 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 23.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.99
bv
0.619
constellation
Sct
dist ly
1353.3445
luminosity
216.7704
mag
7.1
name
HD 168814
spect
A1Ib

About HD 168814

HD 168814 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,353.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sct, shines at apparent magnitude 7.1 and has spectral type A1Ib.

Its spectrum reads A1Ib — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 168814 in the constellation Sct. At apparent magnitude 7.1, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 168814 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 168814 is an uncommon star

HD 168814 scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), White A-type star and Supergiant — 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.