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Rare star 34 EP

HD 220780

RA 351.7899° · Dec -62.7371° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Deep red star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Cool red M-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Cool red M-type star · +5
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Deep red star · +8

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads M0II/III — 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 bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

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 6.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Tucana.
  • 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. ≈ 19.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.774
bv
1.633
constellation
Tuc
dist ly
1087.1866
luminosity
177.6642
mag
6.84
name
HD 220780
spect
M0II/III

About HD 220780

HD 220780 is a rare star. It lies about 1,087.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Tuc, shines at apparent magnitude 6.84 and has spectral type M0II/III.

Its spectrum reads M0II/III — 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 220780 in the constellation Tuc. At apparent magnitude 6.84, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 220780 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 220780 is a rare star

HD 220780 scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Cool red M-type star, Bright giant and Deep red 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.