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Common star 15 EP

HD 202878

RA 319.3358° · Dec 46.0737° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
15 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 15

7 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B9 — 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.

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 8.3 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. ≈ 26.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.4 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.048
bv
0.01
constellation
Cyg
dist ly
1524.0934
luminosity
91.0332
mag
8.3
name
HD 202878
spect
B9

About HD 202878

HD 202878 is a common star. It lies about 1,524.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cyg, shines at apparent magnitude 8.3 and has spectral type B9.

Its spectrum reads B9 — 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 HD 202878 in the constellation Cyg. At apparent magnitude 8.3, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 202878 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 202878 is a common star

HD 202878 scores 15 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years) and Hot blue B-type 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.