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Rare star 34 EP

HD 38232

RA 86.3824° · Dec 29.2985° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

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 7.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Auriga.
  • 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. ≈ 44.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.044
bv
0.644
constellation
Aur
dist ly
2548.0938
luminosity
572.2687
mag
7.42
name
HD 38232
spect
F5II

About HD 38232

HD 38232 is a rare star. It lies about 2,548.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Aur, shines at apparent magnitude 7.42 and has spectral type F5II.

Its spectrum reads F5II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 38232 in the constellation Aur. At apparent magnitude 7.42, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 38232 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 38232 is a rare star

HD 38232 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 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star, Bright giant 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.