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Rare star 43 EP

HD 108002

RA 186.2332° · Dec -65.2110° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
43 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 43

7 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B1Iab — 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. Drop it where the Sun is and its surface would engulf the inner planets.

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 6.9 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. ≈ 42.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.444
bv
0.11
constellation
Mus
dist ly
2434.0001
luminosity
827.18
mag
6.92
name
HD 108002
spect
B1Iab

About HD 108002

HD 108002 is a rare star. It lies about 2,434 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 6.92 and has spectral type B1Iab.

Its spectrum reads B1Iab — 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 108002 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 6.92, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 108002 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 108002 is a rare star

HD 108002 scores 43 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-type star, Supergiant 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.