About HIP 96974
HIP 96974 is a trash star. It lies about 486.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Pav and shines at apparent magnitude 11.66.
Line it up beside the Sun and the two would be about equally bright.
Trash star 3 EP
HIP 96974
RA 295.6814° · Dec -69.3728° · star
Score breakdown
· 1 badgeTrash 15 pts → Common
- Star +3
Total score 3
12 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
Trivia
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 11.7 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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 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. ≈ 8.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
- Fastest probe ever. ≈ 759 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
- At 10% light speed. ≈ 4861 years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
Properties
- absmag
- 5.794
- constellation
- Pav
- dist ly
- 486.0745
- luminosity
- 0.4192
- mag
- 11.66
- name
- HIP 96974
How to see it
Look for HIP 96974 in the constellation Pav. At apparent magnitude 11.66, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 96974 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 HIP 96974 is a trash star
HIP 96974 scores 3 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 1 science badge — 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.