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Uncommon star 30 EP

HD 38658

RA 87.1722° · Dec 28.3246° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Bright giant +12
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B3II — 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 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 8.3 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. ≈ 30.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.256
bv
0.138
constellation
Tau
dist ly
1716.6106
luminosity
110.2554
mag
8.35
name
HD 38658
spect
B3II

About HD 38658

HD 38658 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,716.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Tau, shines at apparent magnitude 8.35 and has spectral type B3II.

Its spectrum reads B3II — 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 38658 in the constellation Tau. At apparent magnitude 8.35, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 38658 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 38658 is an uncommon star

HD 38658 scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), On the zodiac, Hot blue B-type star and Bright giant — 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.