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Uncommon variable star 25 EP

HD 12288

RA 30.8771° · Dec 69.5823° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Variable star +5
  • White A-type star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • A named variable star +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) +2
Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) · +2
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A0p... — 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.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

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 7.8 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 17.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.303
bv
0.081
constellation
Cas
dist ly
1006.6544
luminosity
65.887
mag
7.75
name
HD 12288
spect
A0p...
var amplitude
0.05
var designation
V540
var max
7.721
var min
7.771

About HD 12288

HD 12288 is an uncommon variable star. It lies about 1,006.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 7.75 and has spectral type A0p....

Its spectrum reads A0p... — 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 12288 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 7.75, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 12288 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 12288 is an uncommon variable star

HD 12288 scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Never sets (northern circumpolar), White A-type star, Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) and A named variable 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.