← Back to dex
Rare star 38 EP

HD 270196

RA 87.8366° · Dec -70.2859° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 5 badges
38 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 38

12 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B1.5Ia — 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 luminous supergiant — among the largest and rarest stars in the galaxy.

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 11.6 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. ≈ 22.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
3.676
bv
-0.048
constellation
Men
dist ly
1259.2896
luminosity
2.9485
mag
11.61
name
HD 270196
spect
B1.5Ia

About HD 270196

HD 270196 is a rare star. It lies about 1,259.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Men, shines at apparent magnitude 11.61 and has spectral type B1.5Ia.

Its spectrum reads B1.5Ia — 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 270196 in the constellation Men. At apparent magnitude 11.61, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 270196 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 270196 is a rare star

HD 270196 scores 38 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-type star, Supergiant and Blue-white 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.