Star Stars · In Leo
Denebola
Denebola, β Leonis, is a white main-sequence star in Leo: the 64th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Leo
- Designation
- β Leonis
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.14 · 64th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- A3Vvar
- Distance
- 35.9 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid March
- Position (J2000)
- RA 11h 49m · Dec +14° 34′
A white main-sequence star, around 9,300 K, like Sirius and Vega. About 55× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 14 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left in 1990.
When to see it
On the night of Wed 17 Mar 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 16:55 | 00:09 · 53° | 07:23 |
| New York EDT | 18:14 | 01:04 · 64° | 07:54 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:14 | 01:14 · 77° | 07:15 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 19:46 | 01:05 · 42° | 06:25 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 55° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 40° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid March, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid June it is highest in the early evening, and in mid December not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 35.9 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.14 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 5.0: one you would need a dark country sky to see at all.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.14 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Algieba: Denebola is 22° east of it, a spread hand at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 55°; from 35° north it climbs to 70°; from the equator it climbs to 75°; from 35° south it climbs to 40°.
Science
Denebola’s surface is about 9,300 K, some 3,500 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 310 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 1.9, about as bright as Alhena looks to us.
Did you know
Against Algieba, the brighter star the hop starts from: the two look about as bright as each other in our sky; Algieba is 130 light-years away and Denebola 36 light-years, so side by side Algieba would give off 15 times as much light as Denebola.
Science
Denebola is the 10th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Porrima, about 13 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 21° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 12° south of Denebola around mid September, 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 14 hours a day, from 35° north about 13 and from 35° south about 11. It is 71° from the plane of the Milky Way, well away from the band.