← Back to dex
Trash star 13 EP

HD 72881

RA 127.8401° · Dec -65.5228° · star

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

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 3 badges
13 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • White A-type star +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 13

2 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads Ap... — 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.

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 Volans.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 14.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.3 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
0.455
bv
-0.055
constellation
Vol
dist ly
817.4337
luminosity
57.2796
mag
7.45
name
HD 72881
spect
Ap...

About HD 72881

HD 72881 is a trash star. It lies about 817.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vol, shines at apparent magnitude 7.45 and has spectral type Ap....

Its spectrum reads Ap... — 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 HD 72881 in the constellation Vol. At apparent magnitude 7.45, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 72881 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 72881 is a trash star

HD 72881 scores 13 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, White A-type star and Blue-white 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.