About HIP 12142
HIP 12142 is a trash star. It lies about 162.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ari and shines at apparent magnitude 12.33.
Its colour puts the surface at roughly 5280 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Trash star 6 EP
HIP 12142
RA 39.1293° · Dec 17.7181° · star
Score breakdown
· 2 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Star +3
- On the zodiac +3
Total score 6
9 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- On the zodiac · +3
Trivia
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 12.3 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Aries.
- 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.
Getting there
- Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 2.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
- Fastest probe ever. ≈ 253.7 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
- At 10% light speed. ≈ 1625 years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
Properties
- absmag
- 8.843
- bv
- 0.8
- constellation
- Ari
- dist ly
- 162.5092
- luminosity
- 0.0253
- mag
- 12.33
- name
- HIP 12142
How to see it
Look for HIP 12142 in the constellation Ari. At apparent magnitude 12.33, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 12142 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 HIP 12142 is a trash star
HIP 12142 scores 6 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and On the zodiac — 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.