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Common star 17 EP

GL GJ 3086A

RA 20.0146° · Dec 38.9904° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Deep red star +8
  • Binary star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Binary star · +6
  • Deep red star · +8

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. 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 12 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Andromeda.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around October — 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. ≈ 3.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 303.7 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
8.153
binary
yes
bv
2.1
constellation
And
dist ly
194.4878
luminosity
0.0477
mag
12.03
name
GL GJ 3086A

About GL GJ 3086A

GL GJ 3086A is a common star. It lies about 194.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation And and shines at apparent magnitude 12.03.

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 GJ 3086A in the constellation And. At apparent magnitude 12.03, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, GL GJ 3086A 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 GJ 3086A is a common star

GL GJ 3086A 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, Binary star 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.