help

Star Age and Distance Information

-- Sandy | August 14, 2019

Chart of the position of a nova that appeared in the year 1670

Question:

Hello i have gone on a search to find a way if it was possible to name a star after my hopefully soon to be fiance. I came to find out that that is not possible and any website offering to do so is fradulent I stumbled upon the IAU website, Who was ever so helpful and was able to identify a star with my fiancees birth date –> HD12377 those are the numbers to the star you can plug it in their website and it will come up. So I’m trying to put all this stuff together and understand how things work what I am trying to find out if it’s possible is #1 the age of the star #2 the distance, in reality I’m looking for any typos cute interesting information that I can put on a piece of paper and frame it. I am not looking for it to be a certificate type of deal just something that matches her birthdate the star image (i do have the image), so on and so forth. I don’t know if you are able to help me or maybe guide me into the area that I can find this type of information I’ve been doing a lot of Web search and I’m getting thousands and thousands of hits that are leading me to the wrong area with irrelevant information would you be able to help me?
Thank you for your time!

-- Sandy

Answer:

It appears that you are looking for information regarding the distance and age of the star HD12377. One good source for this information would be the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center. The information at this site, for the star HD12377, lists its distance as 451.5896 parsecs, which is about 8659 trillion miles. As for the age, it is not possible to determine the age of an individual star without knowing its association with other stars. Note, though, that the web site I listed above does give other information about this star, including its brightness (listed under “fluxes”) and location in the sky. Hopefully this information helps.

-- Jeff Mangum

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