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Rare star 38 EP

HD 43496

RA 94.2762° · Dec 15.8506° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
38 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • In Orion's hunting ground +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
  • In Orion's hunting ground · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8II — 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 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 7.3 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. ≈ 20.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.521
bv
-0.09
constellation
Ori
dist ly
1190.3504
luminosity
140.7343
mag
7.29
name
HD 43496
spect
B8II

About HD 43496

HD 43496 is a rare star. It lies about 1,190.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ori, shines at apparent magnitude 7.29 and has spectral type B8II.

Its spectrum reads B8II — 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 43496 in the constellation Ori. At apparent magnitude 7.29, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 43496 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 43496 is a rare star

HD 43496 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 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), In Orion's hunting ground, Hot blue B-type star, Bright giant 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.