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Trash star 11 EP

HD 120444

RA 207.8066° · Dec -60.6292° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
11 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) +5
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 11

4 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) · +5

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F2IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a subgiant, caught in the act of leaving the main sequence as the hydrogen in its core runs out.

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 8.3 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. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 11.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.816
bv
0.498
constellation
Cen
dist ly
637.0234
luminosity
16.3531
mag
8.27
name
HD 120444
spect
F2IV

Nearby objects

About HD 120444

HD 120444 is a trash star. It lies about 637 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 8.27 and has spectral type F2IV.

Its spectrum reads F2IV — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 120444 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 8.27, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 120444 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 120444 is a trash star

HD 120444 scores 11 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Subgiant (leaving the main sequence) — 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.