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Rare star 34 EP

HR 5306

RA 214.2298° · Dec -77.6642° · star

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Bright giant +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Star +3
  • Orange K-type star +3
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Orange K-type star · +3
  • Bright giant · +12
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads K2IIp — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.
  • 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 6.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Apus.
  • 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. ≈ 35.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.472
bv
1.375
constellation
Aps
dist ly
2013.3088
luminosity
848.7895
mag
6.48
name
HR 5306
spect
K2IIp

About HR 5306

HR 5306 is a rare star. It lies about 2,013.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Aps, shines at apparent magnitude 6.48 and has spectral type K2IIp.

Its spectrum reads K2IIp — a K-type star. Orange K dwarfs are the marathon runners of the galaxy, burning steadily for tens of billions of years.

How to see it

Look for HR 5306 in the constellation Aps. At apparent magnitude 6.48, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HR 5306 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 HR 5306 is a rare star

HR 5306 scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Orange K-type star, Bright giant and Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) — 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.