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Uncommon star 33 EP

HD 106616

RA 184.0080° · Dec -65.1926° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
33 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Supergiant +18
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 33

1 more point to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B1Ib/II — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is a supergiant, hundreds of times wider than the Sun.

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 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Musca.
  • 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. ≈ 34.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-0.883
bv
0
constellation
Mus
dist ly
1941.4048
luminosity
196.4265
mag
7.99
name
HD 106616
spect
B1Ib/II

About HD 106616

HD 106616 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,941.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 7.99 and has spectral type B1Ib/II.

Its spectrum reads B1Ib/II — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 106616 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 7.99, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 106616 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 106616 is an uncommon star

HD 106616 scores 33 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-type star and Supergiant — 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.