Observing Skills · 1 of 11

Bright Stars of the Season

Which stars should you learn first, in a sky full of them?

Five stars you can walk outside and find tonight — each one the door into its constellation.

You’ll be able to go outside tonight and name the season’s five brightest stars.

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Tonight’s five, bright and well up, in the order to find them.

Sirius, in Canis Major. The brightest star in the night sky, and bright mostly because it is close. Its faint companion is a white dwarf: about the Sun’s mass in a body the size of the Earth.

Canopus, in Carina. The second-brightest star in the night sky, and not for being near: a supergiant shining like ten thousand Suns. Spacecraft have steered by it since the 1960s.

Rigil Kentaurus, in Centaurus. α Centauri, the nearest star system to ours. One point to the eye; a small telescope splits it into two Sun-like stars that circle each other every 80 years.

Arcturus, in Boötes. The fourth-brightest star, and unmistakably orange: a giant past the end of its core’s hydrogen. It is crossing our sky fast, the width of a full Moon every 800 years.

Vega, in Lyra. In 1850 the first star after the Sun to be photographed. It spins so fast it is squashed, its equator 2,000 K cooler than its poles, and we happen to see it pole-on.

Capella, in Auriga. One golden point, and two yellow giants circling each other every 104 days — far too close for any backyard telescope to split.

Rigel, in Orion. Orion’s blue-white foot, a supergiant at 12,100 K: twice as hot as the Sun’s surface, and tens of thousands of times as bright. Colour is a thermometer.

Procyon, in Canis Minor. One of the Sun’s near neighbours, with a white dwarf circling it: predicted in 1844 from a wobble in Procyon’s path, and first seen in 1896.

Achernar, in Eridanus. Arabic for ‘the end of the river’. It spins so fast that its equator bulges some 40% wider than its poles: one of the flattest stars known.

Betelgeuse, in Orion. Orion’s red-orange shoulder, a supergiant near the end of its life. Its light wanders a little from year to year; in 2019–20 it faded to a third of its usual brightness behind a cloud of its own dust.

Hadar, in Centaurus. One of the two Pointers to the Southern Cross. One blue-white point, and three stars: a close pair of hot giants and a fainter third.

Altair, in Aquila. It turns once in about 7.7 hours and is a quarter wider at the equator than through the poles — the first star burning hydrogen, as the Sun does, to have its surface imaged.

Acrux, in Crux. The foot of the Southern Cross and its brightest star. Any small telescope splits it in two: hot blue-white stars a hair’s breadth apart.

Aldebaran, in Taurus. The eye of the Bull. It looks like the brightest of the Hyades, the V in the ring, and is not: the cluster is more than twice as far away.

Spica, in Virgo. Blue-white, and two hot stars whipping round each other every four days, so close that each pulls the other out of round.

Antares, in Scorpius. The heart of the Scorpion, and one of the two reddest bright stars in the sky. About 680 solar radii: put it where the Sun is and its surface would swallow Mars.

Pollux, in Gemini. The brighter Twin, orange beside Castor. It has a planet at least twice Jupiter’s mass, confirmed in 2006.

Fomalhaut, in Piscis Austrinus. Alone in a wide empty stretch of sky; its name means ‘mouth of the fish’. A vast ring of dust and ice circles it, photographed by Hubble and, in 2023, by Webb.

Deneb, in Cygnus. The Swan’s tail, and the farthest of the first-magnitude stars. Too bright for Gaia to measure; to look this bright from so far, it must outshine the Sun at least 50,000 times.

Mimosa, in Crux. The second star of the Southern Cross: a blue giant of about fifteen Suns, whose light pulses, very slightly, every few hours.

Regulus, in Leo. The full stop of Leo’s backwards question mark. It lies 0.46° from the ecliptic, the Sun’s own path, so the Moon and the planets keep walking across it.

Castor, in Gemini. The fainter Twin, beside Pollux — and six stars in one: three pairs, each too close to split by eye, all bound together.

Gacrux, in Crux. The head of the Southern Cross, and its odd one out: a red giant among blue-white stars, and under a third as far away as the rest of the Cross.

Alioth, in Ursa Major. The brightest of the Big Dipper’s seven, first in its handle. It and four of the others travel through space together, a family born in one cloud.

Alnair, in Grus. Arabic for ‘the bright one’: the Crane’s brightest star, blue-white, and spinning at over 200 km/s at its equator — a hundred times the Sun’s pace.

Alkaid, in Ursa Major. The end of the Big Dipper’s handle, and not of the family: the middle five travel together and Alkaid goes its own way, so the Dipper is slowly being bent out of shape.

Peacock, in Pavo. Pavo’s brightest star, and nameless until the late 1930s, when Britain’s new air almanac needed a name for every star its navigators steered by.

Hamal, in Aries. The Ram’s brightest star, an orange giant. When the zodiac was drawn the March equinox lay in Aries — still called the First Point of Aries, though the slow wobble of Earth’s axis has since carried it into Pisces.

Diphda, in Cetus. The Sea Monster’s brightest star, though labelled β: an orange giant alone in a dark stretch of sky. Its name is Arabic for ‘the second frog’.

Mirach, in Andromeda. Warm orange, and the stepping stone to one of the sky’s best sights: two short hops from it lies the smudge of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.56 million light-years away.

Rasalhague, in Ophiuchus. The head of the Serpent-Bearer, whose feet stand on the ecliptic, the Sun’s path: the Sun spends eighteen days a year in Ophiuchus, the thirteenth zodiac constellation no horoscope mentions.

Sadr, in Cygnus. The Swan’s breast, where the two beams of the Northern Cross meet: a yellow-white supergiant sitting in the thick of the Milky Way.

Eltanin, in Draco. The Dragon’s head. Watching it in 1725–28, James Bradley found it tracing a small yearly loop: the aberration of starlight, the first direct proof that the Earth moves.

Ankaa, in Phoenix. The Phoenix’s brightest star, an orange giant. Its name is Arabic for the phoenix, the bird reborn from its ashes; the constellation itself was only drawn around 1600.

Scheat, in Pegasus. A corner of the Great Square, and a red giant that will not hold still: its brightness wanders, a little up and a little down, with no regular beat.

Enif, in Pegasus. The Winged Horse’s nose and its brightest star: an orange supergiant so swollen that, put where the Sun is, its surface would reach past the orbit of Venus.

Polaris, in Ursa Minor. Only about the fiftieth-brightest star, and famous for standing still: it is under a degree from the north celestial pole, so the sky turns round it.

Algieba, in Leo. In the Lion’s mane. A small telescope splits it into two golden giants a hair’s breadth apart, circling each other once in five or six centuries.

Denebola, in Leo. The Lion’s tail — its name is Arabic for exactly that. A young white star, ringed by a cold disc of dust: the rubble of planet-building.

Alpheratz, in Andromeda. A corner of the Great Square of Pegasus, and Andromeda’s head — one of two stars the IAU had to give to a single figure after centuries of sharing.

Why these five? Watch one clock time, night after night, for a year.

Your five again, to take outside.

Five bright stars, in the order to hop
A degree further west each night
The same stars on the same dates

Bright Stars of the Season

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