Star Stars · In Orion
Bellatrix
Bellatrix, γ Orionis, is a blue-white giant in Orion: the 28th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Orion
- Designation
- γ Orionis
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.64 · 28th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- B2III
- Distance
- 252 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 05h 25m · Dec +06° 21′
A blue-white giant, around 26,000 K, like Rigel and Spica. About 88× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 1,100 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1774.
When to see it
On the night of Thu 10 Dec 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 17:36 | 00:08 · 45° | 06:39 |
| New York EST | 17:41 | 00:02 · 56° | 06:23 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:13 | 01:13 · 85° | 07:13 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 19:22 | 01:04 · 50° | 06:46 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 46° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 49° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early 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 early September not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 252 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 1.64 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 9.3: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 1.64 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Betelgeuse: Bellatrix is 7.5° west of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 46°; from 35° north it climbs to 61°; from the equator it climbs to 84°; from 35° south it climbs to 49°.
Science
Bellatrix’s surface is about 26,000 K, some 20,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 110 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 −2.8, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Betelgeuse, the brighter star the hop starts from: Betelgeuse looks 3.0 times as bright as Bellatrix in our sky; Betelgeuse is 498 light-years away and Bellatrix 252 light-years, so side by side Betelgeuse would give off 12 times as much light as Bellatrix.
Science
Bellatrix is the 95th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Tejat, about 92 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 21° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 17° north of Bellatrix around early 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 13 hours a day, from 35° north about 13 and from 35° south about 11. It is 16° from the plane of the Milky Way.