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Common star 16 EP

Kap Oct

RA 205.2339° · Dec -85.7860° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
16 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Naked-eye visible +8
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 16

6 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Naked-eye visible · +8
  • White A-type star · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A2m... — 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 5.6 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Octans.
  • 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 4.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 426.5 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
0.945
bv
0.183
constellation
Oct
dist ly
273.1625
luminosity
36.4754
mag
5.56
name
Kap Oct
spect
A2m...

About Kap Oct

Kap Oct is a common star. It lies about 273.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Oct, shines at apparent magnitude 5.56 and has spectral type A2m....

Its spectrum reads A2m... — 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 Kap Oct in the constellation Oct. At apparent magnitude 5.56, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Kap Oct 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 Kap Oct is a common star

Kap Oct 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 3 science badges — Star, Naked-eye visible and White A-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.