← Back to dex
Uncommon star 30 EP

HD 126226

RA 216.7970° · Dec -66.5680° · star

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 5 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Giant star +6
  • White A-type star +5
  • Star +3
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star · +3
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • White A-type star · +5
  • Giant star · +6
  • Intrinsically luminous (Mv < −2) · +10

Trivia

What it actually is

  • Spectral class. Its spectrum reads A1III — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.
  • 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 6.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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. ≈ 44.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

absmag
-2.877
bv
0.102
constellation
Cir
dist ly
2528.3411
luminosity
1232.5371
mag
6.57
name
HD 126226
spect
A1III

About HD 126226

HD 126226 is an uncommon star. It lies about 2,528.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cir, shines at apparent magnitude 6.57 and has spectral type A1III.

Its spectrum reads A1III — an A-type star: white-hot, typically about twice the Sun's mass, and the class most of the sky's famous bright stars belong to.

How to see it

Look for HD 126226 in the constellation Cir. At apparent magnitude 6.57, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 126226 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 126226 is an uncommon star

HD 126226 scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), White A-type star, Giant star 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.