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Common star 20 EP

HIP 109851

RA 333.7295° · Dec 46.5734° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8 — 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 9.8 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Lacerta.
  • 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. ≈ 26.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.3 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
1.502
bv
-0.034
constellation
Lac
dist ly
1489.2968
luminosity
21.8374
mag
9.8
name
HIP 109851
spect
B8

About HIP 109851

HIP 109851 is a common star. It lies about 1,489.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Lac, shines at apparent magnitude 9.8 and has spectral type B8.

Its spectrum reads B8 — 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 HIP 109851 in the constellation Lac. At apparent magnitude 9.8, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 109851 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 HIP 109851 is a common star

HIP 109851 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), Hot blue B-type star and Blue-white 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.