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Uncommon star 32 EP

HR 3971

RA 150.8922° · Dec -61.8840° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • 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 32

2 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
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B4:Vne — 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 6.1 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. ≈ 28.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.6 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-2.366
bv
-0.032
constellation
Car
dist ly
1638.975
luminosity
769.8392
mag
6.14
name
HR 3971
spect
B4:Vne

About HR 3971

HR 3971 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,639 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 6.14 and has spectral type B4:Vne.

Its spectrum reads B4:Vne — 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 HR 3971 in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 6.14, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 3971 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 HR 3971 is an uncommon star

HR 3971 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, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence star, Blue-white star and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.