About HIP 51980
HIP 51980 is a trash star. It lies about 168.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ant and shines at apparent magnitude 12.86.
It is a genuine dim bulb — only about 1.6% of the Sun's light output.
Trash star 3 EP
HIP 51980
RA 159.3150° · Dec -29.8555° · star
Score breakdown
· 1 badgeTrash 15 pts → Common
- Star +3
Total score 3
12 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
Trivia
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 12.9 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.
Getting there
- Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
- Fastest probe ever. ≈ 263.2 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
- At 10% light speed. ≈ 1686 years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
Properties
- absmag
- 9.293
- constellation
- Ant
- dist ly
- 168.5561
- luminosity
- 0.0167
- mag
- 12.86
- name
- HIP 51980
How to see it
Look for HIP 51980 in the constellation Ant. At apparent magnitude 12.86, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 51980 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 HIP 51980 is a trash star
HIP 51980 scores 3 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 1 science badge — 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.