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Uncommon variable star 25 EP

HD 81882

RA 142.9256° · Dec 66.8554° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Variable star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Gently variable +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • A named variable star +3
Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Gently variable · +4
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

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 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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. 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).

Properties

absmag
-0.514
bv
0.293
constellation
UMa
dist ly
1763.0053
luminosity
139.8299
mag
8.15
name
HD 81882
spect
F0
var amplitude
0.07
var designation
KZ
var max
8.118
var min
8.188

About HD 81882

HD 81882 is an uncommon variable star. It lies about 1,763 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 8.15 and has spectral type F0.

Its spectrum reads F0 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 81882 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 8.15, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 81882 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 81882 is an uncommon variable star

HD 81882 scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Variable star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star, Gently variable and A named variable 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.