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Rare star 40 EP

HR 5073

RA 201.5335° · Dec 72.3915° · star

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • Deep red star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • Cool red M-type star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Cool red M-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6
  • Deep red star · +8

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads M1III — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 Ursa Minor.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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. ≈ 20.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-1.96
bv
1.652
constellation
UMi
dist ly
1173.2229
luminosity
529.6634
mag
5.82
name
HR 5073
spect
M1III

About HR 5073

HR 5073 is a rare star. It lies about 1,173.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMi, shines at apparent magnitude 5.82 and has spectral type M1III.

Its spectrum reads M1III — an M-type red star — and M stars are the silent majority: roughly three of every four stars in the galaxy are one.

How to see it

Look for HR 5073 in the constellation UMi. At apparent magnitude 5.82, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HR 5073 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 5073 is a rare star

HR 5073 scores 40 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 10 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, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Cool red M-type star, Giant star and Deep red star — 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.