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Trash star 14 EP

HD 217991

RA 346.5752° · Dec -72.9713° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
14 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 14

1 more point to reach Common.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A2m... — 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.

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 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Indus.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around September — 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. ≈ 17.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.6 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
1.523
bv
0.255
constellation
Ind
dist ly
1006.6544
luminosity
21.419
mag
8.97
name
HD 217991
spect
A2m...

Nearby objects

About HD 217991

HD 217991 is a trash star. It lies about 1,006.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ind, shines at apparent magnitude 8.97 and has spectral type A2m....

Its spectrum reads A2m... — 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 217991 in the constellation Ind. At apparent magnitude 8.97, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 217991 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 217991 is a trash star

HD 217991 scores 14 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years) and White A-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.