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Rare star 36 EP

HD 250290

RA 90.2819° · Dec 23.3049° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
36 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 36

14 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B3Ib — 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 supergiant, hundreds of times wider than the Sun.

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 Gemini.
  • 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. ≈ 31.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-1.318
bv
0.575
constellation
Gem
dist ly
1782.2733
luminosity
293.2243
mag
7.37
name
HD 250290
spect
B3Ib

About HD 250290

HD 250290 is a rare star. It lies about 1,782.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Gem, shines at apparent magnitude 7.37 and has spectral type B3Ib.

Its spectrum reads B3Ib — 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 250290 in the constellation Gem. At apparent magnitude 7.37, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 250290 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 250290 is a rare star

HD 250290 scores 36 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 14 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 Supergiant — 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.