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Common star 15 EP

GL Gl 542.1B

RA 214.7514° · Dec -25.8159° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
15 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Binary star +6
  • Intrinsically feeble (Mv > +12) +6
  • Star +3
Total score 15

7 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Binary star · +6
  • Intrinsically feeble (Mv > +12) · +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 13.3 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Hydra.
  • 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 April — 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 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 90.6 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
12.05
binary
yes
constellation
Hya
dist ly
58.0039
luminosity
0.0013
mag
13.3
name
GL Gl 542.1B

About GL Gl 542.1B

GL Gl 542.1B is a common star. It lies about 58 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Hya and shines at apparent magnitude 13.3.

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 542.1B in the constellation Hya. At apparent magnitude 13.3, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, GL Gl 542.1B 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 542.1B is a common star

GL Gl 542.1B scores 15 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Binary star and Intrinsically feeble (Mv > +12) — 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.