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Common star 20 EP

HD 202612

RA 319.6065° · Dec -45.2902° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A3III — 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.
  • 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 7.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Indus.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south 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. ≈ 19.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.266
bv
0.177
constellation
Ind
dist ly
1128.5676
luminosity
111.2756
mag
7.43
name
HD 202612
spect
A3III

About HD 202612

HD 202612 is a common star. It lies about 1,128.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ind, shines at apparent magnitude 7.43 and has spectral type A3III.

Its spectrum reads A3III — 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 202612 in the constellation Ind. At apparent magnitude 7.43, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 202612 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 202612 is a common star

HD 202612 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, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), White A-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.