← Back to dex
Uncommon star 28 EP

HR 8120

RA 318.3601° · Dec 36.6333° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 5 badges
28 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 28

6 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0III — 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 6.1 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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 August — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 27 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.298
bv
0.223
constellation
Cyg
dist ly
1538.4717
luminosity
723.1027
mag
6.07
name
HR 8120
spect
F0III

About HR 8120

HR 8120 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,538.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cyg, shines at apparent magnitude 6.07 and has spectral type F0III.

Its spectrum reads F0III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HR 8120 in the constellation Cyg. At apparent magnitude 6.07, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 8120 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 HR 8120 is an uncommon star

HR 8120 scores 28 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star, Giant star and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.