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Rare star 42 EP

HR 2831

RA 111.2120° · Dec -19.0123° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
42 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 42

8 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A2Ib/II — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • 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 6.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Canis Major.
  • 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 40.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-3.029
bv
0.291
constellation
CMa
dist ly
2329.6857
luminosity
1417.7511
mag
6.24
name
HR 2831
spect
A2Ib/II

About HR 2831

HR 2831 is a rare star. It lies about 2,329.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation CMa, shines at apparent magnitude 6.24 and has spectral type A2Ib/II.

Its spectrum reads A2Ib/II — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HR 2831 in the constellation CMa. At apparent magnitude 6.24, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 2831 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 2831 is a rare star

HR 2831 scores 42 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), White A-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.