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Uncommon star 32 EP

11Sig1UMa

RA 137.0980° · Dec 66.8732° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Deep red star +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6
  • Deep red star · +8

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K5III — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions 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 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. ≈ 9.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.867
bv
1.514
constellation
UMa
dist ly
521.0159
luminosity
193.553
mag
5.15
name
11Sig1UMa
spect
K5III

About 11Sig1UMa

11Sig1UMa is an uncommon star. It lies about 521 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 5.15 and has spectral type K5III.

Its spectrum reads K5III — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for 11Sig1UMa in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 5.15, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 11Sig1UMa 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 11Sig1UMa is an uncommon star

11Sig1UMa scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Orange K-type star, Giant star and Deep red 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.