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Trash star 10 EP

HD 49801

RA 104.6124° · Dec 75.1982° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
10 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 10

5 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived 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 7.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Camelopardalis.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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. ≈ 4.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 390.5 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
3.436
bv
0.453
constellation
Cam
dist ly
250.1196
luminosity
3.6779
mag
7.86
name
HD 49801
spect
F5

About HD 49801

HD 49801 is a trash star. It lies about 250.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cam, shines at apparent magnitude 7.86 and has spectral type F5.

Its spectrum reads F5 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 49801 in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 7.86, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 49801 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 49801 is a trash star

HD 49801 scores 10 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Yellow-white F-type 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.