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Common star 18 EP

HD 16218

RA 39.7430° · Dec 62.5915° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white 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
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B9 — 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.

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 6.7 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. ≈ 7.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 638.2 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
1.17
bv
-0.015
constellation
Cas
dist ly
408.7168
luminosity
29.6483
mag
6.66
name
HD 16218
spect
B9

About HD 16218

HD 16218 is a common star. It lies about 408.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cas, shines at apparent magnitude 6.66 and has spectral type B9.

Its spectrum reads B9 — 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 16218 in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 6.66, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 16218 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 16218 is a common star

HD 16218 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), Hot blue B-type star and Blue-white 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.