← Back to dex
Uncommon star 24 EP

5 UMa

RA 133.3440° · Dec 61.9623° · star

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

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 5 badges
24 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 5.7 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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. ≈ 5.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.978
bv
0.305
constellation
UMa
dist ly
289.6588
luminosity
35.3834
mag
5.72
name
5 UMa
spect
F2III

About 5 UMa

5 UMa is an uncommon star. It lies about 289.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 5.72 and has spectral type F2III.

Its spectrum reads F2III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for 5 UMa in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 5.72, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 5 UMa 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 5 UMa is an uncommon star

5 UMa scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star and Giant 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.