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Rare star 43 EP

HD 72648

RA 128.0791° · Dec -43.9315° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
43 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 43

7 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B1/B2Ib — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

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 7.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Vela.
  • 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. ≈ 52.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 4.6 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-2.173
bv
0.069
constellation
Vel
dist ly
2965.0545
luminosity
644.466
mag
7.62
name
HD 72648
spect
B1/B2Ib

About HD 72648

HD 72648 is a rare star. It lies about 2,965.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vel, shines at apparent magnitude 7.62 and has spectral type B1/B2Ib.

Its spectrum reads B1/B2Ib — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 72648 in the constellation Vel. At apparent magnitude 7.62, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 72648 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 72648 is a rare star

HD 72648 scores 43 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

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