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Rare star 43 EP

HR 2597

RA 104.3566° · Dec 11.9076° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
43 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • On the zodiac +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 43

7 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2Ib-II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant, hundreds of times wider 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 6.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Gemini.
  • 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 January — 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. ≈ 54.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-3.613
bv
0.349
constellation
Gem
dist ly
3076.9433
luminosity
2427.7278
mag
6.26
name
HR 2597
spect
F2Ib-II

About HR 2597

HR 2597 is a rare star. It lies about 3,076.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Gem, shines at apparent magnitude 6.26 and has spectral type F2Ib-II.

Its spectrum reads F2Ib-II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HR 2597 in the constellation Gem. At apparent magnitude 6.26, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 2597 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 HR 2597 is a rare star

HR 2597 scores 43 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), On the zodiac, Yellow-white F-type star, Supergiant and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.