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Rare star 35 EP

HR 4204

RA 160.9634° · Dec -64.2490° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B3: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.

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 5.7 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 20.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.8 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-2.04
bv
0.012
constellation
Car
dist ly
1173.2229
luminosity
570.1643
mag
5.74
name
HR 4204
spect
B3:V

About HR 4204

HR 4204 is a rare star. It lies about 1,173.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 5.74 and has spectral type B3:V.

Its spectrum reads B3: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 HR 4204 in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 5.74, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 4204 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 4204 is a rare star

HR 4204 scores 35 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Hot blue B-type star, Main-sequence 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.