About HD 169220
HD 169220 is a common star. It sits in the constellation Pav, shines at apparent magnitude 8.22 and has spectral type G8III.
Its spectrum reads G8III — a G-type star: the very same spectral class as our own Sun.
Common star 17 EP
HD 169220
RA 277.0135° · Dec -63.3131° · star
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesCommon 22 pts → Uncommon
- Sun-like G-type star +8
- Giant star +6
- Star +3
Total score 17
5 more points to reach Uncommon.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Sun-like G-type star · +8
- Giant star · +6
Trivia
Hard to believe
- True brightness. It pours out about 4.4 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 G8III — a G-type star: the very same spectral class as our own Sun.
- 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 8.2 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.
Its true colour
- Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out orange (B−V 1) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
By the numbers
- Surface temperature. Its colour puts the surface at roughly 4640 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Properties
- absmag
- -11.78
- bv
- 1.043
- constellation
- Pav
- luminosity
- 4487453.8993
- mag
- 8.22
- name
- HD 169220
- spect
- G8III
How to see it
Look for HD 169220 in the constellation Pav. At apparent magnitude 8.22, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 169220 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 169220 is a common star
HD 169220 scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Sun-like G-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.