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Common star 20 EP

17 Cyg

RA 296.6067° · Dec 33.7276° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Binary star +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Binary star · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Not one star but two. It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Inside our stellar backyard: every radio broadcast humanity has ever made has already swept past it.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 5 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Cygnus.
  • 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 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. ≈ 1.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
3.365
binary
yes
bv
0.476
constellation
Cyg
dist ly
69.2475
luminosity
3.9264
mag
5
name
17 Cyg
spect
F5

About 17 Cyg

17 Cyg is a common star. It lies about 69.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cyg, shines at apparent magnitude 5 and has spectral type F5.

It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

How to see it

Look for 17 Cyg in the constellation Cyg. At apparent magnitude 5, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 17 Cyg 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 17 Cyg is a common star

17 Cyg scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Binary star and Yellow-white F-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.