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Rare star 48 EP

HR 4976

RA 198.5723° · Dec -78.4475° · star

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
48 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 48

2 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Supergiant · +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F8Ib — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • 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 5.8 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Chamaeleon.
  • 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. ≈ 21.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.027
bv
1.04
constellation
Cha
dist ly
1221.5579
luminosity
563.3782
mag
5.84
name
HR 4976
spect
F8Ib

About HR 4976

HR 4976 is a rare star. It lies about 1,221.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cha, shines at apparent magnitude 5.84 and has spectral type F8Ib.

Its spectrum reads F8Ib — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HR 4976 in the constellation Cha. At apparent magnitude 5.84, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 4976 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 4976 is a rare star

HR 4976 scores 48 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Yellow-white F-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.