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Rare star 44 EP

HR 3476

RA 130.9178° · Dec -49.8228° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
44 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 44

6 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Giant star · +6
  • Blue-white star · +5
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B0IIIn — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 5.2 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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. ≈ 32.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-3.622
bv
-0.197
constellation
Vel
dist ly
1853.159
luminosity
2447.9357
mag
5.15
name
HR 3476
spect
B0IIIn

About HR 3476

HR 3476 is a rare star. It lies about 1,853.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vel, shines at apparent magnitude 5.15 and has spectral type B0IIIn.

Its spectrum reads B0IIIn — 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 HR 3476 in the constellation Vel. At apparent magnitude 5.15, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 3476 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 HR 3476 is a rare star

HR 3476 scores 44 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Hot blue B-type star, Giant star, Blue-white star 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.