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Common star 17 EP

HD 118230

RA 204.4928° · Dec -70.4120° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
17 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
  • Main-sequence star +2
Total score 17

5 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Main-sequence star · +2

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8V — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.
  • Where it is in life. It is on the main sequence, quietly fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun does.

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 8.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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. ≈ 24.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
0.528
bv
0.06
constellation
Mus
dist ly
1411.9306
luminosity
53.555
mag
8.71
name
HD 118230
spect
B8V

About HD 118230

HD 118230 is a common star. It lies about 1,411.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Mus, shines at apparent magnitude 8.71 and has spectral type B8V.

Its spectrum reads B8V — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 118230 in the constellation Mus. At apparent magnitude 8.71, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 118230 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 118230 is a common star

HD 118230 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 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-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.