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Common star 17 EP

HD 196420

RA 308.1049° · Dec 70.5321° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • White A-type star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A0 — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

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 6.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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. ≈ 12.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.1 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
0.055
bv
-0.017
constellation
Dra
dist ly
715.2542
luminosity
82.7942
mag
6.76
name
HD 196420
spect
A0

About HD 196420

HD 196420 is a common star. It lies about 715.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 6.76 and has spectral type A0.

Its spectrum reads A0 — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 196420 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 6.76, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 196420 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 196420 is a common star

HD 196420 scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), White A-type 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.