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Uncommon star 32 EP

1Kap Cep

RA 302.2222° · Dec 77.7114° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B9III — 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.
  • 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 4.4 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Cepheus.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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. ≈ 5.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.543
bv
-0.046
constellation
Cep
dist ly
314.8224
luminosity
143.6151
mag
4.38
name
1Kap Cep
spect
B9III

About 1Kap Cep

1Kap Cep is an uncommon star. It lies about 314.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cep, shines at apparent magnitude 4.38 and has spectral type B9III.

Its spectrum reads B9III — 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 1Kap Cep in the constellation Cep. At apparent magnitude 4.38, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 1Kap Cep 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 1Kap Cep is an uncommon star

1Kap Cep scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type star, Giant star and Blue-white 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.