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Common star 15 EP

HD 174884

RA 283.1679° · Dec 4.0533° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
15 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 15

7 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8 — 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.

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 8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Serpens.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around July — 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. ≈ 29.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.6 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.56
bv
0.172
constellation
Ser
dist ly
1672.5948
luminosity
145.8814
mag
7.99
name
HD 174884
spect
B8

About HD 174884

HD 174884 is a common star. It lies about 1,672.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ser, shines at apparent magnitude 7.99 and has spectral type B8.

Its spectrum reads B8 — 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 HD 174884 in the constellation Ser. At apparent magnitude 7.99, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 174884 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 174884 is a common star

HD 174884 scores 15 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years) and Hot blue B-type 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.