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Common star 18 EP

HD 12603

RA 29.4532° · Dec -78.7636° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Bright giant +12
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F3II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 7.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Hydrus.
  • 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 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. ≈ 11.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.164
bv
0.463
constellation
Hyi
dist ly
649.7132
luminosity
29.8126
mag
7.66
name
HD 12603
spect
F3II

About HD 12603

HD 12603 is a common star. It lies about 649.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Hyi, shines at apparent magnitude 7.66 and has spectral type F3II.

Its spectrum reads F3II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 12603 in the constellation Hyi. At apparent magnitude 7.66, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 12603 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 12603 is a common star

HD 12603 scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Bright giant — 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.