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Uncommon star 24 EP

HD 121254

RA 209.3226° · Dec -70.1184° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
24 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Bright giant +12
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Yellow-white F-type star +3
Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Yellow-white F-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads F5II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.
  • Where it is in life. It is a bright giant, well on its way to the largest stars there are.

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 9.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Circinus.
  • 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. ≈ 22.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
1.427
bv
0.62
constellation
Cir
dist ly
1294.2699
luminosity
23.3991
mag
9.42
name
HD 121254
spect
F5II

About HD 121254

HD 121254 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,294.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cir, shines at apparent magnitude 9.42 and has spectral type F5II.

Its spectrum reads F5II — an F-type star — a little hotter, whiter and shorter-lived than the Sun.

How to see it

Look for HD 121254 in the constellation Cir. At apparent magnitude 9.42, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, HD 121254 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 121254 is an uncommon star

HD 121254 scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Yellow-white F-type star and Bright giant — 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.