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Uncommon star 25 EP

HD 20295

RA 49.6939° · Dec 59.6345° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B5III — 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 8.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Camelopardalis.
  • 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 26.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.072
bv
0.202
constellation
Cam
dist ly
1509.9816
luminosity
81.508
mag
8.4
name
HD 20295
spect
B5III

About HD 20295

HD 20295 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,510 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cam, shines at apparent magnitude 8.4 and has spectral type B5III.

Its spectrum reads B5III — 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 20295 in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 8.4, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 20295 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 20295 is an uncommon star

HD 20295 scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Never sets (northern circumpolar), 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.