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Common star 17 EP

HD 179931

RA 289.2080° · Dec -48.6336° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a subgiant, caught in the act of leaving the main sequence as the hydrogen in its core runs out.

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 Telescopium.
  • 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 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. ≈ 26.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.308
bv
0.394
constellation
Tel
dist ly
1489.2968
luminosity
115.6645
mag
7.99
name
HD 179931
spect
F0IV

Nearby objects

About HD 179931

HD 179931 is a common star. It lies about 1,489.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Tel, shines at apparent magnitude 7.99 and has spectral type F0IV.

Its spectrum reads F0IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 179931 in the constellation Tel. At apparent magnitude 7.99, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 179931 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 179931 is a common star

HD 179931 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 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star and Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) — 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.