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Trash star 12 EP

HD 181214

RA 289.8315° · Dec 7.1437° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
12 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 12

3 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F8III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 7.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Aquila.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 8.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.009
bv
0.527
constellation
Aql
dist ly
458.7286
luminosity
13.6899
mag
7.75
name
HD 181214
spect
F8III

About HD 181214

HD 181214 is a trash star. It lies about 458.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Aql, shines at apparent magnitude 7.75 and has spectral type F8III.

Its spectrum reads F8III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 181214 in the constellation Aql. At apparent magnitude 7.75, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 181214 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 181214 is a trash star

HD 181214 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-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.