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Rare star 35 EP

Elkurud

RA 91.8818° · Dec -37.2529° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8:IV — 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.

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 5 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Columba.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 12.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.1 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-1.724
bv
-0.095
constellation
Col
dist ly
721.5839
luminosity
426.1868
mag
5
name
Elkurud
named
yes
spect
B8:IV

About Elkurud

Elkurud is a rare star. It lies about 721.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Col, shines at apparent magnitude 5 and has spectral type B8:IV.

Its spectrum reads B8:IV — 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 Elkurud in the constellation Col. At apparent magnitude 5, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Elkurud 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 Elkurud is a rare star

Elkurud scores 35 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Has a proper name, Hot blue B-type star, Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) 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.