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Uncommon star 26 EP

HD 106169

RA 183.2810° · Dec -61.0742° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
26 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Under the Southern Cross +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 26

8 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K1III/IV+.. — 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 8.1 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. ≈ 31 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.594
bv
1.106
constellation
Cru
dist ly
1763.0053
luminosity
150.522
mag
8.07
name
HD 106169
spect
K1III/IV+..

About HD 106169

HD 106169 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,763 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cru, shines at apparent magnitude 8.07 and has spectral type K1III/IV+...

Its spectrum reads K1III/IV+.. — 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 106169 in the constellation Cru. At apparent magnitude 8.07, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 106169 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 106169 is an uncommon star

HD 106169 scores 26 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Under the Southern Cross, 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.