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Rare star 34 EP

HD 103859

RA 179.3580° · Dec -61.1234° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Under the Southern Cross +8
  • Deep red star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Under the Southern Cross · +8
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6
  • Deep red star · +8

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K4III — 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 7.3 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Crux.
  • 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. ≈ 21.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.598
bv
1.673
constellation
Cru
dist ly
1244.8703
luminosity
151.0776
mag
7.31
name
HD 103859
spect
K4III

About HD 103859

HD 103859 is a rare star. It lies about 1,244.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cru, shines at apparent magnitude 7.31 and has spectral type K4III.

Its spectrum reads K4III — 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 HD 103859 in the constellation Cru. At apparent magnitude 7.31, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 103859 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 103859 is a rare star

HD 103859 scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Under the Southern Cross, Orange K-type star, Giant star and Deep red 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.