← Back to dex
Epic star 55 EP

53 Cas

RA 30.7508° · Dec 64.3900° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 7 badges
55 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 55

23 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8Ib — 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 supergiant, hundreds of times wider than the Sun.

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 5.6 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 30.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-3.062
bv
0.325
constellation
Cas
dist ly
1753.5269
luminosity
1461.504
mag
5.59
name
53 Cas
spect
B8Ib

About 53 Cas

53 Cas is an epic star. It lies about 1,753.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 5.59 and has spectral type B8Ib.

Its spectrum reads B8Ib — 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 53 Cas in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 5.59, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 53 Cas 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 53 Cas is an epic star

53 Cas scores 55 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 23 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type star, Supergiant and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.