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Common star 18 EP

HD 11960

RA 29.8378° · Dec 60.4611° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Giant star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A3III — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • 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 8.8 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. ≈ 9.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.714
bv
0.25
constellation
Cas
dist ly
545.4114
luminosity
7.1515
mag
8.83
name
HD 11960
spect
A3III

About HD 11960

HD 11960 is a common star. It lies about 545.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 8.83 and has spectral type A3III.

Its spectrum reads A3III — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 11960 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 8.83, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 11960 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 11960 is a common star

HD 11960 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 4 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), White A-type star and Giant 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.