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Common star 16 EP

HD 96904

RA 167.5603° · Dec 55.6921° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
16 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 16

6 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F0 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

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 8.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Ursa Major.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • 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. ≈ 21.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.9 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
1.043
bv
0.27
constellation
UMa
dist ly
1221.5579
luminosity
33.3273
mag
8.91
name
HD 96904
spect
F0

About HD 96904

HD 96904 is a common star. It lies about 1,221.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 8.91 and has spectral type F0.

Its spectrum reads F0 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 96904 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 8.91, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 96904 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 96904 is a common star

HD 96904 scores 16 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Yellow-white F-type 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.