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Uncommon star 30 EP

HD 51956

RA 104.8823° · Dec 0.9168° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Supergiant +18
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F8Ib: — 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 7.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Monoceros.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • 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. ≈ 42.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-1.832
bv
0.801
constellation
Mon
dist ly
2398.2058
luminosity
470.7605
mag
7.5
name
HD 51956
spect
F8Ib:

About HD 51956

HD 51956 is an uncommon star. It lies about 2,398.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Mon, shines at apparent magnitude 7.5 and has spectral type F8Ib:.

Its spectrum reads F8Ib: — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 51956 in the constellation Mon. At apparent magnitude 7.5, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 51956 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 51956 is an uncommon star

HD 51956 scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star and Supergiant — 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.