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Common star 20 EP

GL Gl 249.1

RA 102.4776° · Dec -46.6146° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Inside our stellar backyard: every radio broadcast humanity has ever made has already swept past it.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 5.1 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Puppis.
  • 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 January — 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. ≈ 1.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
3.128
bv
0.46
constellation
Pup
dist ly
82.3834
luminosity
4.8843
mag
5.14
name
GL Gl 249.1
spect
F5III

About GL Gl 249.1

GL Gl 249.1 is a common star. It lies about 82.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Pup, shines at apparent magnitude 5.14 and has spectral type F5III.

Its spectrum reads F5III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for GL Gl 249.1 in the constellation Pup. At apparent magnitude 5.14, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, GL Gl 249.1 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 GL Gl 249.1 is a common star

GL Gl 249.1 scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Yellow-white F-type star and Giant 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.