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Uncommon star 28 EP

Dubhe

RA 165.9323° · Dec 61.7510° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
28 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 28

6 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Main-sequence star · +2

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F7V comp — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 1.8 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Ursa Major.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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. ≈ 2.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-1.07
bv
1.061
constellation
UMa
dist ly
122.8923
luminosity
233.3458
mag
1.81
name
Dubhe
named
yes
spect
F7V comp

About Dubhe

Dubhe is an uncommon star. It lies about 122.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 1.81 and has spectral type F7V comp.

Its spectrum reads F7V comp — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for Dubhe in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 1.81, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Dubhe 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 Dubhe is an uncommon star

Dubhe scores 28 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Has a proper name, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star and Main-sequence 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.