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Common star 20 EP

HR 4448

RA 173.0833° · Dec -66.9618° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K1IIICN... — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 5.9 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Musca.
  • 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. ≈ 5.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.025
bv
1.136
constellation
Mus
dist ly
306.5377
luminosity
33.8844
mag
5.89
name
HR 4448
spect
K1IIICN...

About HR 4448

HR 4448 is a common star. It lies about 306.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 5.89 and has spectral type K1IIICN....

Its spectrum reads K1IIICN... — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HR 4448 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 5.89, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 4448 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 HR 4448 is a common star

HR 4448 scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Orange K-type star and Giant 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.