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Uncommon star 22 EP

HD 78985

RA 137.6190° · Dec -26.2869° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
22 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 22

12 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B3/B4V — 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.

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 7.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Pyxis.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 31 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.8 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-1.184
bv
-0.112
constellation
Pyx
dist ly
1763.0053
luminosity
259.1791
mag
7.48
name
HD 78985
spect
B3/B4V

About HD 78985

HD 78985 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,763 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Pyx, shines at apparent magnitude 7.48 and has spectral type B3/B4V.

Its spectrum reads B3/B4V — 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 HD 78985 in the constellation Pyx. At apparent magnitude 7.48, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 78985 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 78985 is an uncommon star

HD 78985 scores 22 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), 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.