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Uncommon star 27 EP

HD 123224

RA 211.9078° · Dec -48.1860° · star

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
27 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Bright giant +12
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Hot blue B-type star +6
  • Star +3
Total score 27

7 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Hot blue B-type star · +6
  • Bright giant · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads B8/B9II — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

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 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Centaurus.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 21.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 1.9 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

absmag
0.088
bv
0
constellation
Cen
dist ly
1235.4395
luminosity
80.3156
mag
7.98
name
HD 123224
spect
B8/B9II

About HD 123224

HD 123224 is an uncommon star. It lies about 1,235.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen, shines at apparent magnitude 7.98 and has spectral type B8/B9II.

Its spectrum reads B8/B9II — a blue-white B-type star, with a surface tens of thousands of degrees hot and a life measured in tens of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for HD 123224 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 7.98, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 123224 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 123224 is an uncommon star

HD 123224 scores 27 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Hot blue B-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.