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Uncommon variable star 27 EP

HR 4646

RA 183.0497° · Dec 77.6162° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
27 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Variable star +5
  • White A-type star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • A named variable star +3
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) +2
Total score 27

7 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Variable star · +5
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) · +2
  • A named variable star · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A5m — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • It changes. This star does not hold still: its brightness rises and falls on a rhythm of hours, days or years, either pulsing in size or being eclipsed by a companion.

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 5.1 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Camelopardalis.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 1.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
2.523
bv
0.358
constellation
Cam
dist ly
108.8637
luminosity
8.5271
mag
5.14
name
HR 4646
spect
A5m
var amplitude
0.04
var designation
CO
var max
5.122
var min
5.162

About HR 4646

HR 4646 is an uncommon variable star. It lies about 108.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cam, shines at apparent magnitude 5.14 and has spectral type A5m.

Its spectrum reads A5m — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HR 4646 in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 5.14, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 4646 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 4646 is an uncommon variable star

HR 4646 scores 27 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Variable star, Naked-eye visible, Never sets (northern circumpolar), White A-type star, Barely variable (under 0.05 mag) and A named variable 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.