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Uncommon star 30 EP

59 UMa

RA 174.5858° · Dec 43.6254° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Bright giant +12
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2II-III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

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 5.6 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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. ≈ 2.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.223
bv
0.348
constellation
UMa
dist ly
151.6299
luminosity
11.2409
mag
5.56
name
59 UMa
spect
F2II-III

About 59 UMa

59 UMa is an uncommon star. It lies about 151.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 5.56 and has spectral type F2II-III.

Its spectrum reads F2II-III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for 59 UMa in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 5.56, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 59 UMa 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 59 UMa is an uncommon star

59 UMa scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star and Bright giant — 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.