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Uncommon star 24 EP

HR 561

RA 29.6384° · Dec 61.6978° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
24 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B5III — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Cassiopeia.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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. ≈ 12.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.728
bv
-0.042
constellation
Cas
dist ly
729.6553
luminosity
170.2943
mag
6.02
name
HR 561
spect
B5III

About HR 561

HR 561 is an uncommon star. It lies about 729.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 6.02 and has spectral type B5III.

Its spectrum reads B5III — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HR 561 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 6.02, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 561 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 HR 561 is an uncommon star

HR 561 scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type star, Giant star and Blue-white 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.