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Common star 20 EP

68 Dra

RA 302.8951° · Dec 62.0785° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Main-sequence star · +2

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5V — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is on the main sequence, quietly fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun does.

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 5.7 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Draco.
  • 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. ≈ 2.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.278
bv
0.53
constellation
Dra
dist ly
157.7157
luminosity
10.6856
mag
5.7
name
68 Dra
spect
F5V

About 68 Dra

68 Dra is a common star. It lies about 157.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 5.7 and has spectral type F5V.

Its spectrum reads F5V — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for 68 Dra in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 5.7, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 68 Dra 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 68 Dra is a common star

68 Dra 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 5 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star and Main-sequence 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.