← Back to dex
Common variable star 19 EP

53 Cam

RA 120.4270° · Dec 60.3244° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 5 badges
19 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Variable star +5
  • White A-type star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • A named variable star +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) +2
Total score 19

3 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A2p... — 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.
  • 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 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. ≈ 5.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.048
bv
0.158
constellation
Cam
dist ly
321.9704
luminosity
33.1742
mag
6.02
name
53 Cam
spect
A2p...
var amplitude
0.02
var designation
AX
var max
6.014
var min
6.034

About 53 Cam

53 Cam is a common variable star. It lies about 322 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cam, shines at apparent magnitude 6.02 and has spectral type A2p....

Its spectrum reads A2p... — 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 53 Cam in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 6.02, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, 53 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 53 Cam is a common variable star

53 Cam scores 19 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Variable star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), White A-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.