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Trash star 8 EP

HD 78509

RA 135.4894° · Dec -76.8945° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
8 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 8

7 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Main-sequence star · +2

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5V — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 8.4 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Chamaeleon.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • 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. ≈ 9.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.372
bv
0.469
constellation
Cha
dist ly
523.5247
luminosity
9.7994
mag
8.4
name
HD 78509
spect
F5V

Nearby objects

About HD 78509

HD 78509 is a trash star. It lies about 523.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cha, shines at apparent magnitude 8.4 and has spectral type F5V.

Its spectrum reads F5V — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 78509 in the constellation Cha. At apparent magnitude 8.4, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 78509 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 78509 is a trash star

HD 78509 scores 8 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Main-sequence 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.