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Trash star 12 EP

HIP 40290

RA 123.4192° · Dec -63.4218° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
12 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 12

3 more points to reach Common.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads Fp — 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 11.7 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Carina.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • 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. ≈ 56.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 5 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
1.783
constellation
Car
dist ly
3197.608
luminosity
16.8578
mag
11.74
name
HIP 40290
spect
Fp

About HIP 40290

HIP 40290 is a trash star. It lies about 3,197.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 11.74 and has spectral type Fp.

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

How to see it

Look for HIP 40290 in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 11.74, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 40290 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 HIP 40290 is a trash star

HIP 40290 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years) 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.