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Common variable star 17 EP

49 Cam

RA 116.6143° · Dec 62.8305° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Variable star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • A named variable star +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) +2
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) · +2
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0p SrEu — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

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 6.5 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. ≈ 5.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.573
bv
0.262
constellation
Cam
dist ly
315.4313
luminosity
20.455
mag
6.5
name
49 Cam
spect
F0p SrEu
var amplitude
0.05
var designation
BC
var max
6.472
var min
6.522

About 49 Cam

49 Cam is a common variable star. It lies about 315.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cam, shines at apparent magnitude 6.5 and has spectral type F0p SrEu.

Its spectrum reads F0p SrEu — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for 49 Cam in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 6.5, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, 49 Cam 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 49 Cam is a common variable star

49 Cam scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star, Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) and A named variable 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.