Star Stars · In Lepus
Arneb
Arneb, α Leporis, is a yellow-white supergiant in Lepus: the 100th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Lepus
- Designation
- α Leporis
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.58 · 100th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- F0Ib
- Distance
- 2,219 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 05h 33m · Dec −17° 49′
A yellow-white supergiant, around 7,500 K, like Procyon. About 37× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 36,000 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 194 BC.
When to see it
On the night of Sat 12 Dec 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 19:43 | 00:07 · 21° | 04:31 |
| New York EST | 19:07 | 00:02 · 31° | 04:57 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:15 | 01:12 · 71° | 07:10 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 18:15 | 01:03 · 74° | 07:52 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 22° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 73° 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 2,219 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.58 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 14.0: too faint for anything less than a telescope.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.58 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Saiph: Arneb is 8.9° south-west of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 22°; from 35° north it climbs to 37°; from the equator it climbs to 72°; from 35° south it climbs to 73°.
Science
Arneb’s surface is about 7,500 K, some 1,700 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 390 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 −6.6, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Saiph, the brighter star the hop starts from: Saiph looks 1.6 times as bright as Arneb in our sky, but Saiph is 647 light-years away and Arneb 2,219 light-years, so side by side Arneb would give off 7.3 times as much light as Saiph.
Science
Arneb is the 155th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Hatysa, about 490 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 12° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 41° north of Arneb 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 9 hours a day, from 35° north about 10 and from 35° south about 14. It is 25° from the plane of the Milky Way.