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Common star 21 EP

HD 14581

RA 35.8497° · Dec 56.8542° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B7III — 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 8.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Perseus.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • 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. ≈ 20 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.849
bv
0.152
constellation
Per
dist ly
1136.4322
luminosity
39.8474
mag
8.56
name
HD 14581
spect
B7III

About HD 14581

HD 14581 is a common star. It lies about 1,136.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Per, shines at apparent magnitude 8.56 and has spectral type B7III.

Its spectrum reads B7III — 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 HD 14581 in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 8.56, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 14581 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 14581 is a common star

HD 14581 scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-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.