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Rare star 35 EP

HD 99897

RA 172.2258° · Dec -62.6527° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Blazing O-type star +26
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Blazing O-type star · +26

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads O6 — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

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 8.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Centaurus.
  • 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 31.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.8 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.372
bv
0.157
constellation
Cen
dist ly
1801.9669
luminosity
122.6874
mag
8.34
name
HD 99897
spect
O6

About HD 99897

HD 99897 is a rare star. It lies about 1,802 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 8.34 and has spectral type O6.

Its spectrum reads O6 — an O-type star — the hottest, rarest main class there is. Fewer than one star in a million is an O, and none of them lasts long.

How to see it

Look for HD 99897 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 8.34, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 99897 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 99897 is a rare star

HD 99897 scores 35 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years) and Blazing O-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.