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Common star 17 EP

GL Gl 518.2B

RA 204.3076° · Dec 30.0873° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Sun-like G-type star +8
  • Binary star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Binary star · +6
  • Sun-like G-type star · +8

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Not one star but two. It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

Hard to believe

  • True brightness. It pours out about 474.2 thousand times as much light as the Sun. It only looks ordinary because it is so far away.

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads G0 — a G-type star: the very same spectral class as our own Sun.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 10.6 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Canes Venatici.
  • 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Measured through blue and visual filters it comes out orange (B−V 0.9) — cooler than the Sun, and the kind of star that burns steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • Why no green stars. No star ever looks green: a surface hot enough to peak in green also floods out plenty of red and blue, and your eye blends the mixture back to white.

Properties

absmag
-9.36
binary
yes
bv
0.854
constellation
CVn
luminosity
483058.802
mag
10.64
name
GL Gl 518.2B
spect
G0

Nearby objects

About GL Gl 518.2B

GL Gl 518.2B is a common star. It sits in the constellation CVn, shines at apparent magnitude 10.64 and has spectral type G0.

It is a binary: two stars orbiting a shared centre of mass. More than half of all the 'stars' you can see are actually multiple systems.

How to see it

Look for GL Gl 518.2B in the constellation CVn. At apparent magnitude 10.64, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, GL Gl 518.2B 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 GL Gl 518.2B is a common star

GL Gl 518.2B scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Binary star and Sun-like G-type 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.