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Uncommon star 30 EP

Acamar

RA 44.5653° · Dec -40.3047° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Giant star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A4III+... — 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.
  • 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 2.9 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Eridanus.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south 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. ≈ 2.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.59
bv
0.128
constellation
Eri
dist ly
161.2238
luminosity
149.9685
mag
2.88
name
Acamar
named
yes
spect
A4III+...

About Acamar

Acamar is an uncommon star. It lies about 161.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Eri, shines at apparent magnitude 2.88 and has spectral type A4III+....

Its spectrum reads A4III+... — 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 Acamar in the constellation Eri. At apparent magnitude 2.88, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Acamar 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 Acamar is an uncommon star

Acamar scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Has a proper name, White A-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.