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Rare star 44 EP

81Pi 2Cyg

RA 326.6984° · Dec 49.3096° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
44 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 44

6 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B3III — 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.
  • 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 4.2 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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. ≈ 19.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-3.421
bv
-0.12
constellation
Cyg
dist ly
1105.6137
luminosity
2034.2297
mag
4.23
name
81Pi 2Cyg
spect
B3III

About 81Pi 2Cyg

81Pi 2Cyg is a rare star. It lies about 1,105.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cyg, shines at apparent magnitude 4.23 and has spectral type B3III.

Its spectrum reads B3III — 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 81Pi 2Cyg in the constellation Cyg. At apparent magnitude 4.23, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 81Pi 2Cyg 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 81Pi 2Cyg is a rare star

81Pi 2Cyg scores 44 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Hot blue B-type star, Giant star, Blue-white 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.