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Common star 17 EP

HIP 21392

RA 68.8867° · Dec -74.3712° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Deep red star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Deep red star · +8

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads R... — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.

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 8.8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Mensa.
  • 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. ≈ 38.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 3.4 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.379
bv
1.527
constellation
Men
dist ly
2203.7568
luminosity
123.481
mag
8.77
name
HIP 21392
spect
R...

About HIP 21392

HIP 21392 is a common star. It lies about 2,203.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Men, shines at apparent magnitude 8.77 and has spectral type R....

Its spectrum reads R... — a carbon star, wrapped in so much soot that its light is filtered to a deep ruby red.

How to see it

Look for HIP 21392 in the constellation Men. At apparent magnitude 8.77, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 21392 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 HIP 21392 is a common star

HIP 21392 scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

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