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Uncommon star 24 EP

31 Cep

RA 338.9412° · Dec 73.6432° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
24 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F3III-IV — 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 5.1 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Cepheus.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 3.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.383
bv
0.395
constellation
Cep
dist ly
179.0097
luminosity
24.3669
mag
5.08
name
31 Cep
spect
F3III-IV

About 31 Cep

31 Cep is an uncommon star. It lies about 179 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cep, shines at apparent magnitude 5.08 and has spectral type F3III-IV.

Its spectrum reads F3III-IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for 31 Cep in the constellation Cep. At apparent magnitude 5.08, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 31 Cep 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 31 Cep is an uncommon star

31 Cep scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-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.