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Common star 20 EP

Mu 1Oct

RA 310.5110° · Dec -76.1806° · star

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Score breakdown

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F4III-IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 6 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Octans.
  • 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. ≈ 5.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.966
bv
0.45
constellation
Oct
dist ly
329.7835
luminosity
35.7767
mag
5.99
name
Mu 1Oct
spect
F4III-IV

About Mu 1Oct

Mu 1Oct is a common star. It lies about 329.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Oct, shines at apparent magnitude 5.99 and has spectral type F4III-IV.

Its spectrum reads F4III-IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for Mu 1Oct in the constellation Oct. At apparent magnitude 5.99, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Mu 1Oct 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 Mu 1Oct is a common star

Mu 1Oct 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, Yellow-white F-type star and Giant 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.