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Common variable star 17 EP

HD 220237

RA 350.1881° · Dec 77.0626° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Variable star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • A named variable star +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) +2
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) · +2
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

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 7.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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 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. ≈ 11.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.092
bv
0.415
constellation
Cep
dist ly
668.3524
luminosity
31.8566
mag
7.65
name
HD 220237
spect
F2
var amplitude
0.05
var designation
V459
var max
7.617
var min
7.667

About HD 220237

HD 220237 is a common variable star. It lies about 668.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cep, shines at apparent magnitude 7.65 and has spectral type F2.

Its spectrum reads F2 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 220237 in the constellation Cep. At apparent magnitude 7.65, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 220237 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 220237 is a common variable star

HD 220237 scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star, Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) and A named variable 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.