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Common star 16 EP

HIP 56204

RA 172.8288° · Dec 76.5513° · 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 F8 — 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 9.9 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Draco.
  • 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 17.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.6 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
2.456
bv
0.445
constellation
Dra
dist ly
1019.2375
luminosity
9.0698
mag
9.93
name
HIP 56204
spect
F8

About HIP 56204

HIP 56204 is a common star. It lies about 1,019.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra, shines at apparent magnitude 9.93 and has spectral type F8.

Its spectrum reads F8 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HIP 56204 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 9.93, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HIP 56204 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 56204 is a common star

HIP 56204 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.