Star Stars · In Carina
Avior
Avior, ε Carinae, is an orange giant in Carina: the 41st brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Carina
- Designation
- ε Carinae
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.86 · 41st brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K3III+B2V
- Distance
- 605 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- late January
- Position (J2000)
- RA 08h 23m · Dec −59° 31′
An orange giant, around 4,800 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 72× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 5,200 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1421.
When to see it
On the night of Sun 24 Jan 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 | 19:22 | 01:12 · 29° | 07:02 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | Never sets | 01:03 · 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 late January, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late April it is highest in the early evening, and in late October not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 605 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 1.86 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 11.2: too faint for anything less than a telescope.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 1.86 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Miaplacidus: Avior is 12° north-west of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north and 35° north it never rises; from the equator it climbs to 30°; from 35° south it is circumpolar and never sets.
Science
Avior’s surface is about 4,800 K, some 1,000 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 600 nm, 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 −4.5, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Miaplacidus, the brighter star the hop starts from: the two look about as bright as each other in our sky; Miaplacidus is 113 light-years away and Avior 605 light-years, so side by side Avior would give off 24 times as much light as Miaplacidus.
Science
Avior is the 140th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Markeb, about 100 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 9.2° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 73° north of Avior around late July, when it is highest at noon, in daylight: the weeks either side are its worst time of year. It is 13° from the plane of the Milky Way.