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Common star 16 EP

HD 49531

RA 100.7777° · Dec -69.2978° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
16 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 16

6 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8/B9Vn — 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 8.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Volans.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • 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. ≈ 15.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.4 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
1.741
bv
-0.039
constellation
Vol
dist ly
881.5028
luminosity
17.5227
mag
8.9
name
HD 49531
spect
B8/B9Vn

About HD 49531

HD 49531 is a common star. It lies about 881.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vol, shines at apparent magnitude 8.9 and has spectral type B8/B9Vn.

Its spectrum reads B8/B9Vn — 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 49531 in the constellation Vol. At apparent magnitude 8.9, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 49531 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 49531 is a common star

HD 49531 scores 16 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence star 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.