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Common star 15 EP

HD 117433

RA 202.2078° · Dec 59.9283° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
15 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Blue-white star +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 15

7 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Blue-white star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F8 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived 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 7.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Ursa Major.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 4.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 373.9 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
3.611
bv
-0.2
constellation
UMa
dist ly
239.4683
luminosity
3.1304
mag
7.94
name
HD 117433
spect
F8

About HD 117433

HD 117433 is a common star. It lies about 239.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa, shines at apparent magnitude 7.94 and has spectral type F8.

Its spectrum reads F8 — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 117433 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 7.94, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 117433 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 117433 is a common star

HD 117433 scores 15 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Yellow-white F-type star and Blue-white 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.