About HD 246606
HD 246606 is a trash star. It lies about 1,359 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Tau and shines at apparent magnitude 8.57.
Its colour puts the surface at roughly 4150 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Trash star 12 EP
HD 246606
RA 85.7028° · Dec 21.3891° · star
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
- Star +3
- On the zodiac +3
Total score 12
3 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
- On the zodiac · +3
Trivia
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 8.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Taurus.
- 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 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. ≈ 23.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
- Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.1 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
- At 10% light speed. ≈ 13.6 thousand years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
Properties
- absmag
- 0.471
- bv
- 1.284
- constellation
- Tau
- dist ly
- 1358.9834
- luminosity
- 56.4417
- mag
- 8.57
- name
- HD 246606
How to see it
Look for HD 246606 in the constellation Tau. At apparent magnitude 8.57, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, HD 246606 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 246606 is a trash star
HD 246606 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 On the zodiac — 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.