← Back to dex
Common star 19 EP

HD 97437

RA 166.5558° · Dec -85.7488° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges
19 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 19

3 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B9.5IV — 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 a subgiant, caught in the act of leaving the main sequence as the hydrogen in its core runs out.

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 7.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Octans.
  • 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. ≈ 10.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.978
bv
-0.03
constellation
Oct
dist ly
588.7292
luminosity
35.3834
mag
7.26
name
HD 97437
spect
B9.5IV

About HD 97437

HD 97437 is a common star. It lies about 588.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Oct, shines at apparent magnitude 7.26 and has spectral type B9.5IV.

Its spectrum reads B9.5IV — 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 HD 97437 in the constellation Oct. At apparent magnitude 7.26, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 97437 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 HD 97437 is a common star

HD 97437 scores 19 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Hot blue B-type star, Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) and Blue-white 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.