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Rare star 34 EP

HR 1296

RA 63.7575° · Dec 57.4604° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

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 6.1 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. ≈ 24.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.103
bv
0.6
constellation
Cam
dist ly
1399.811
luminosity
604.2268
mag
6.06
name
HR 1296
spect
A4III

About HR 1296

HR 1296 is a rare star. It lies about 1,399.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cam, shines at apparent magnitude 6.06 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 HR 1296 in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 6.06, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 1296 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 HR 1296 is a rare star

HR 1296 scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Never sets (northern circumpolar), White A-type star, Giant star and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.