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Common star 20 EP

HR 3470

RA 132.2053° · Dec 66.7081° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8V — 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 on the main sequence, quietly fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun does.

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 6.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Ursa Major.
  • 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 February — 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. ≈ 8.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.275
bv
-0.106
constellation
UMa
dist ly
499.4733
luminosity
67.6083
mag
6.2
name
HR 3470
spect
B8V

About HR 3470

HR 3470 is a common star. It lies about 499.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 6.2 and has spectral type B8V.

Its spectrum reads B8V — 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 3470 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 6.2, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 3470 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 3470 is a common star

HR 3470 scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence 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.