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Epic star 50 EP

HR 4622

RA 182.1031° · Dec -60.8471° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
50 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Bright giant +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Under the Southern Cross +8
  • Deep red star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 50

28 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Under the Southern Cross · +8
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Deep red star · +8
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K3/K4II — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

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 6.2 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. ≈ 49.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 4.4 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-3.458
bv
1.733
constellation
Cru
dist ly
2811.6898
luminosity
2104.7475
mag
6.22
name
HR 4622
spect
K3/K4II

About HR 4622

HR 4622 is an epic star. It lies about 2,811.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cru, shines at apparent magnitude 6.22 and has spectral type K3/K4II.

Its spectrum reads K3/K4II — 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 4622 in the constellation Cru. At apparent magnitude 6.22, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 4622 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 4622 is an epic star

HR 4622 scores 50 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 28 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Under the Southern Cross, Orange K-type star, Bright giant, Deep red star and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.