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Epic star 56 EP

HR 5002

RA 199.3043° · Dec -66.7834° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
56 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Supergiant +18
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Deep red star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 56

22 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

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

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K2Ib/II — 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 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 4.9 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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 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 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.959
bv
1.48
constellation
Mus
dist ly
1194.7107
luminosity
1329.2296
mag
4.86
name
HR 5002
spect
K2Ib/II

About HR 5002

HR 5002 is an epic star. It lies about 1,194.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 4.86 and has spectral type K2Ib/II.

Its spectrum reads K2Ib/II — 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 HR 5002 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 4.86, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 5002 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 5002 is an epic star

HR 5002 scores 56 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 22 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Naked-eye visible, Orange K-type star, Supergiant, Deep red star 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.