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Common star 20 EP

Gam Tuc

RA 349.3575° · Dec -58.2357° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F1III — 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. Inside our stellar backyard: every radio broadcast humanity has ever made has already swept past it.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 4 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Tucana.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 1.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.176
bv
0.41
constellation
Tuc
dist ly
75.2031
luminosity
11.7382
mag
3.99
name
Gam Tuc
spect
F1III

About Gam Tuc

Gam Tuc is a common star. It lies about 75.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Tuc, shines at apparent magnitude 3.99 and has spectral type F1III.

Its spectrum reads F1III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for Gam Tuc in the constellation Tuc. At apparent magnitude 3.99, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Gam Tuc 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 Gam Tuc is a common star

Gam Tuc 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, Naked-eye visible, 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.