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Uncommon star 22 EP

Aiolos

RA 164.2628° · Dec -68.6673° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
22 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Giant star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 22

12 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A8III — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 7.4 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 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. ≈ 5.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.579
bv
0.23
constellation
Car
dist ly
294.8969
luminosity
8.0984
mag
7.36
name
Aiolos
named
yes
spect
A8III

About Aiolos

Aiolos is an uncommon star. It lies about 294.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Car, shines at apparent magnitude 7.36 and has spectral type A8III.

Its spectrum reads A8III — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for Aiolos in the constellation Car. At apparent magnitude 7.36, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, Aiolos 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 Aiolos is an uncommon star

Aiolos scores 22 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Has a proper name, White A-type star and Giant 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.