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Common star 20 EP

16 Per

RA 42.6459° · Dec 38.3186° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 4.2 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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 November — 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. ≈ 2.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.378
bv
0.343
constellation
Per
dist ly
120.7537
luminosity
24.4794
mag
4.22
name
16 Per
spect
F2III

About 16 Per

16 Per is a common star. It lies about 120.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Per, shines at apparent magnitude 4.22 and has spectral type F2III.

Its spectrum reads F2III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for 16 Per in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 4.22, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 16 Per 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 16 Per is a common star

16 Per scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Yellow-white F-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.