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Common star 20 EP

HD 219381

RA 349.1574° · Dec -70.2510° · 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
  • Cool red M-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads M7III — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.
  • 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 7.6 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. ≈ 27 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.758
bv
1.295
constellation
Ind
dist ly
1538.4717
luminosity
175.0653
mag
7.61
name
HD 219381
spect
M7III

About HD 219381

HD 219381 is a common star. It lies about 1,538.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ind, shines at apparent magnitude 7.61 and has spectral type M7III.

Its spectrum reads M7III — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.

How to see it

Look for HD 219381 in the constellation Ind. At apparent magnitude 7.61, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 219381 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 219381 is a common star

HD 219381 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), Cool red M-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.