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Rare star 39 EP

Talitha

RA 134.8024° · Dec 48.0418° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Binary star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Binary star · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Not one star but two. It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A7IV — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is a subgiant, caught in the act of leaving the main sequence as the hydrogen in its core runs out.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Inside our stellar backyard: every radio broadcast humanity has ever made has already swept past it.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 3.1 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Ursa Major.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • 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.

Properties

absmag
2.312
binary
yes
bv
0.223
constellation
UMa
dist ly
47.3239
luminosity
10.3562
mag
3.12
name
Talitha
named
yes
spect
A7IV

About Talitha

Talitha is a rare star. It lies about 47.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 3.12 and has spectral type A7IV.

It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

How to see it

Look for Talitha in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 3.12, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Talitha 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 Talitha is a rare star

Talitha scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Binary star, Has a proper name, Never sets (northern circumpolar), White A-type star and Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) — 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.