Star Stars · In Carina
Aspidiske
Aspidiske, ι Carinae, is a white supergiant in Carina: the 68th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Carina
- Designation
- ι Carinae
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.21 · 68th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- A8Ib
- Distance
- 766 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early February
- Position (J2000)
- RA 09h 17m · Dec −59° 17′
A white supergiant, around 8,000 K, like Sirius and Vega. About 52× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 6,000 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1260.
When to see it
On the night of Sat 6 Feb 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | Never rises | ||
| New York EST | Never rises | ||
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:26 | 01:16 · 29° | 07:05 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | Never sets | 01:07 · 64° | — |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- No. From there it never rises: you would have to travel south of 30° north before it cleared the horizon at all.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes, on any clear night of the year — it is circumpolar from there and never quite sets, though at its lowest it skims the horizon, where trees and haze will hide it.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early February, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by early May it is highest in the early evening, and in early November not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 766 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.21 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 11.7: too faint for anything less than a telescope.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.21 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Alsephina: Aspidiske is 6.3° south-east of it, three fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north and 35° north it never rises; from the equator it climbs to 31°; from 35° south it is circumpolar and never sets.
Science
Aspidiske’s surface is about 8,000 K, some 2,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 360 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 −4.6, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Alsephina, the brighter star the hop starts from: Alsephina looks 1.3 times as bright as Aspidiske in our sky, but Alsephina is 81 light-years away and Aspidiske 766 light-years, so side by side Aspidiske would give off 70 times as much light as Alsephina.
Science
Aspidiske is the 146th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Avior, about 180 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 6.9° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 67° north of Aspidiske around early August, when it is highest at noon, in daylight: the weeks either side are its worst time of year. It is 7° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.