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Trash star 12 EP

HD 120865

RA 207.9625° · Dec 11.9372° · star

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
12 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Giant star +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 12

3 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Giant star · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a giant. It has already exhausted its core hydrogen and swollen up enormously in response.

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 6.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Boötes.
  • 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.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 3.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
3.119
bv
0.432
constellation
Boo
dist ly
186.056
luminosity
4.9249
mag
6.9
name
HD 120865
spect
F5III

About HD 120865

HD 120865 is a trash star. It lies about 186.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Boo, shines at apparent magnitude 6.9 and has spectral type F5III.

Its spectrum reads F5III — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 120865 in the constellation Boo. At apparent magnitude 6.9, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 120865 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 120865 is a trash star

HD 120865 scores 12 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star, Yellow-white F-type star and Giant 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.