About HIP 55401
HIP 55401 is a trash star. It lies about 289.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 12.27.
Its colour puts the surface at roughly 5600 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Trash star 7 EP
HIP 55401
RA 170.1837° · Dec 46.9773° · star
Score breakdown
· 2 badgesTrash 15 pts → Common
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
- Star +3
Total score 7
8 more points to reach Common.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
Trivia
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 12.3 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.
Getting there
- Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 5.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
- Fastest probe ever. ≈ 451.9 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
- At 10% light speed. ≈ 2894 years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
Properties
- absmag
- 7.53
- bv
- 0.7
- constellation
- UMa
- dist ly
- 289.4018
- luminosity
- 0.0847
- mag
- 12.27
- name
- HIP 55401
How to see it
Look for HIP 55401 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 12.27, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 55401 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 HIP 55401 is a trash star
HIP 55401 scores 7 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 2 science badges — Star and Never sets (northern circumpolar) — 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.