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Common star 17 EP

HD 85860

RA 148.5214° · Dec -27.9990° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B3/5V + B/A — 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 7.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Antlia.
  • 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. ≈ 24.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.2 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.945
constellation
Ant
dist ly
1387.8978
luminosity
207.9697
mag
7.2
name
HD 85860
spect
B3/5V + B/A

About HD 85860

HD 85860 is a common star. It lies about 1,387.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ant, shines at apparent magnitude 7.2 and has spectral type B3/5V + B/A.

Its spectrum reads B3/5V + B/A — 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 85860 in the constellation Ant. At apparent magnitude 7.2, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 85860 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 85860 is a common star

HD 85860 scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-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.