Star Stars · In Orion
Alnitak
Alnitak, ζ Orionis, is a blue supergiant in Orion: the 33rd brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Orion
- Designation
- ζ Orionis
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.74 · 33rd brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- O9.5Ib SB
- Distance
- 736 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 05h 41m · Dec −01° 57′
A blue supergiant, around 31,000 K. About 80× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 8,600 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1290.
When to see it
On the night of Mon 14 Dec 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 18:18 | 00:07 · 37° | 05:57 |
| New York EST | 18:10 | 00:02 · 47° | 05:55 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:14 | 01:13 · 87° | 07:12 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 19:00 | 01:04 · 58° | 07:08 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 38° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 57° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid December, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid March it is highest in the early evening, and in mid September not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 736 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 1.74 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 11.6: too faint for anything less than a telescope.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 1.74 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Alnilam: Alnitak is 1.4° south-east of it, a little finger at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 38°; from 35° north it climbs to 53°; from the equator it climbs to 88°; from 35° south it climbs to 57°.
Science
Alnitak’s surface is about 31,000 K, some 25,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 90 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 −5.0, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Alnilam, the brighter star the hop starts from: the two look about as bright as each other in our sky; Alnilam is 1,977 light-years away and Alnitak 736 light-years, so side by side Alnilam would give off 7.5 times as much light as Alnitak.
Science
Alnitak is the 145th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Mintaka, about 55 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 2.7° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 25° north of Alnitak around mid June, when it is highest at noon, in daylight: the weeks either side are its worst time of year. From 50° north it is above the horizon for about 12 hours a day, from 35° north about 12 and from 35° south about 12. It is 17° from the plane of the Milky Way.