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Trash star 14 EP

HD 42170

RA 91.5769° · Dec -52.3213° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
14 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 14

1 more point to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Main-sequence star · +2

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F7/8V (+A) — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived 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 8.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Carina.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south 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. ≈ 28.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.5 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.213
bv
0.581
constellation
Car
dist ly
1614.6336
luminosity
105.9742
mag
8.26
name
HD 42170
spect
F7/8V (+A)

Nearby objects

About HD 42170

HD 42170 is a trash star. It lies about 1,614.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 8.26 and has spectral type F7/8V (+A).

Its spectrum reads F7/8V (+A) — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 42170 in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 8.26, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 42170 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 42170 is a trash star

HD 42170 scores 14 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star and Main-sequence 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.