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Common star 17 EP

HD 39338

RA 85.4284° · Dec -77.6970° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a subgiant, caught in the act of leaving the main sequence as the hydrogen in its core runs out.

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 9.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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 December — 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. ≈ 20.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.709
bv
0.475
constellation
Men
dist ly
1190.3504
luminosity
18.0468
mag
9.52
name
HD 39338
spect
F2IV

About HD 39338

HD 39338 is a common star. It lies about 1,190.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Men, shines at apparent magnitude 9.52 and has spectral type F2IV.

Its spectrum reads F2IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 39338 in the constellation Men. At apparent magnitude 9.52, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 39338 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 39338 is a common star

HD 39338 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 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star and Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) — 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.