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Epic star 51 EP

HD 111990

RA 193.4992° · Dec -60.3354° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
51 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Under the Southern Cross +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 51

27 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Under the Southern Cross · +8
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B3Ib — 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 6.8 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 April — 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. ≈ 56.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-3.177
bv
0.226
constellation
Cru
dist ly
3197.608
luminosity
1624.8003
mag
6.78
name
HD 111990
spect
B3Ib

About HD 111990

HD 111990 is an epic star. It lies about 3,197.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cru, shines at apparent magnitude 6.78 and has spectral type B3Ib.

Its spectrum reads B3Ib — 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 111990 in the constellation Cru. At apparent magnitude 6.78, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 111990 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 111990 is an epic star

HD 111990 scores 51 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 27 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Under the Southern Cross, 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.