Star Stars · In Taurus
Alcyone
Alcyone, η Tauri, is a blue-white giant in Taurus: the 145th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Taurus
- Designation
- η Tauri
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.85 · 145th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- B7III
- Distance
- 403 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid November
- Position (J2000)
- RA 03h 47m · Dec +24° 06′
A blue-white giant, around 16,000 K, like Rigel and Spica. About 29× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 930 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1623.
When to see it
On the night of Sun 15 Nov 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 15:53 | 00:09 · 63° | 08:25 |
| New York EST | 16:34 | 00:03 · 73° | 07:33 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:13 | 01:14 · 67° | 07:16 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 20:16 | 01:05 · 32° | 05:54 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 64° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 31° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid November, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid February it is highest in the early evening, and in mid August not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 403 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.85 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 10.3: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.85 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Aldebaran: Alcyone is 14° north-west of it, a fist and a half at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 64°; from 35° north it climbs to 79°; from the equator it climbs to 66°; from 35° south it climbs to 31°.
Science
Alcyone’s surface is about 16,000 K, some 10,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 180 nm, in the ultraviolet, past the violet end of what the eye can see, where the Sun’s is strongest at 500 nm. Moved to 33 light-years, the distance astronomers compare stars at, it would shine at magnitude −2.6, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Aldebaran, the brighter star the hop starts from: Aldebaran looks 6.2 times as bright as Alcyone in our sky, but Aldebaran is 67 light-years away and Alcyone 403 light-years, so side by side Alcyone would give off 5.9 times as much light as Aldebaran.
Science
Alcyone is the 116th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Hassaleh, about 160 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 18° apart.
Look for
Alcyone lies 4.1° north of the ecliptic, close enough to the Sun’s path that the Moon can pass in front of it and the planets pass near it. The Sun goes by around mid May, and for weeks either side it is lost in the glare. From 50° north it is above the horizon for about 16 hours a day, from 35° north about 14 and from 35° south about 10. It is 23° from the plane of the Milky Way.