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Common star 20 EP

HD 26994

RA 63.8615° · Dec -16.4452° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B7III — 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 6.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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. ≈ 16.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.435
bv
-0.127
constellation
Eri
dist ly
942.6473
luminosity
130.017
mag
6.87
name
HD 26994
spect
B7III

About HD 26994

HD 26994 is a common star. It lies about 942.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Eri, shines at apparent magnitude 6.87 and has spectral type B7III.

Its spectrum reads B7III — 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 26994 in the constellation Eri. At apparent magnitude 6.87, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 26994 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 26994 is a common star

HD 26994 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, Hot blue B-type star, Giant star and Blue-white 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.