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Common star 16 EP

HD 118137

RA 204.1391° · Dec -62.3450° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
16 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 16

6 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Main-sequence star · +2

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A0/A1V — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

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 7.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Centaurus.
  • 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. ≈ 29.5 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 2.6 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
-0.891
bv
0.913
constellation
Cen
dist ly
1681.2164
luminosity
197.8791
mag
7.67
name
HD 118137
spect
A0/A1V

About HD 118137

HD 118137 is a common star. It lies about 1,681.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 7.67 and has spectral type A0/A1V.

Its spectrum reads A0/A1V — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 118137 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 7.67, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 118137 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 118137 is a common star

HD 118137 scores 16 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), White A-type star and Main-sequence 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.