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Rare star 34 EP

HR 6997

RA 279.1556° · Dec 33.4690° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8II-IIIp.. — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.
  • 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 5.4 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Lyra.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north 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. ≈ 8.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.535
bv
-0.101
constellation
Lyr
dist ly
504.1051
luminosity
142.5608
mag
5.41
name
HR 6997
spect
B8II-IIIp..

About HR 6997

HR 6997 is a rare star. It lies about 504.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Lyr, shines at apparent magnitude 5.41 and has spectral type B8II-IIIp...

Its spectrum reads B8II-IIIp.. — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HR 6997 in the constellation Lyr. At apparent magnitude 5.41, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 6997 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 HR 6997 is a rare star

HR 6997 scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Hot blue B-type star, Bright giant and Blue-white 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.