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Trash star 12 EP

HD 21989

RA 52.2442° · Dec -63.9617° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
12 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 12

3 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Orange K-type star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K1p... — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions 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 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Reticulum.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • 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. ≈ 28.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.5 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.345
bv
1.28
constellation
Ret
dist ly
1630.78
luminosity
119.6741
mag
8.15
name
HD 21989
spect
K1p...

About HD 21989

HD 21989 is a trash star. It lies about 1,630.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ret, shines at apparent magnitude 8.15 and has spectral type K1p....

Its spectrum reads K1p... — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 21989 in the constellation Ret. At apparent magnitude 8.15, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 21989 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 21989 is a trash star

HD 21989 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years) and Orange K-type 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.