About HIP 66689
HIP 66689 is a common star. It lies about 2,296.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 11.7.
Its colour puts the surface at roughly 10960 K, against the Sun's 5778 K.
Common star 18 EP
HIP 66689
RA 205.0612° · Dec 60.8799° · star
Score breakdown
· 4 badgesCommon 22 pts → Uncommon
- Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
- Blue-white star +5
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
- Star +3
Total score 18
4 more points to reach Uncommon.
Badges
- Star · +3
- Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
- Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
- Blue-white star · +5
Trivia
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 11.7 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Ursa Major.
- 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. ≈ 40.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
- Fastest probe ever. ≈ 3.6 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
- At 10% light speed. ≈ 23 thousand years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
Properties
- absmag
- 2.461
- bv
- -0.061
- constellation
- UMa
- dist ly
- 2296.8734
- luminosity
- 9.0282
- mag
- 11.7
- name
- HIP 66689
How to see it
Look for HIP 66689 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 11.7, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, HIP 66689 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 HIP 66689 is a common star
HIP 66689 scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Never sets (northern circumpolar) 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.