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Common star 17 EP

GL Gl 321.3B

RA 131.1741° · Dec -54.7081° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Binary star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Binary star · +6

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Not one star but two. It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

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 5 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Vela.
  • 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 January — 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. ≈ 1.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 124.5 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
3.059
binary
yes
constellation
Vel
dist ly
79.7448
luminosity
5.2048
mag
5
name
GL Gl 321.3B

About GL Gl 321.3B

GL Gl 321.3B is a common star. It lies about 79.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vel and shines at apparent magnitude 5.

It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

How to see it

Look for GL Gl 321.3B in the constellation Vel. At apparent magnitude 5, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, GL Gl 321.3B 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 GL Gl 321.3B is a common star

GL Gl 321.3B 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 3 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible and Binary 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.