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Uncommon star 25 EP

HD 87285

RA 150.2305° · Dec -69.8068° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B7IV/V — 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.
  • Where it is in life. It is a subgiant, caught in the act of leaving the main sequence as the hydrogen in its core runs out.

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 8.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Carina.
  • 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 28.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.067
bv
-0.042
constellation
Car
dist ly
1614.6336
luminosity
81.8842
mag
8.54
name
HD 87285
spect
B7IV/V

About HD 87285

HD 87285 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,614.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 8.54 and has spectral type B7IV/V.

Its spectrum reads B7IV/V — 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 87285 in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 8.54, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 87285 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 87285 is an uncommon star

HD 87285 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 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-type star, Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) 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.