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Uncommon star 30 EP

HD 39455

RA 88.3619° · Dec 18.1700° · 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
  • In Orion's hunting ground +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • In Orion's hunting ground · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12

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 7.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Orion.
  • 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. ≈ 22.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.42
bv
0.494
constellation
Ori
dist ly
1304.624
luminosity
128.2331
mag
7.59
name
HD 39455
spect
F5II

About HD 39455

HD 39455 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,304.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ori, shines at apparent magnitude 7.59 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 39455 in the constellation Ori. At apparent magnitude 7.59, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 39455 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 39455 is an uncommon star

HD 39455 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), In Orion's hunting ground, Yellow-white F-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.