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Rare star 34 EP

The Car

RA 160.7392° · Dec -64.3945° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • 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 B0Vp — 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 on the main sequence, quietly fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun does.

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 2.7 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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 March — 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. ≈ 8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.985
bv
-0.22
constellation
Car
dist ly
455.5251
luminosity
1361.4447
mag
2.74
name
The Car
spect
B0Vp

About The Car

The Car is a rare star. It lies about 455.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 2.74 and has spectral type B0Vp.

Its spectrum reads B0Vp — 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 The Car in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 2.74, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, The Car 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 The Car is a rare star

The Car scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, 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.