Star Stars · In Taurus
Elnath
Elnath, β Tauri, is a blue-white giant in Taurus: the 29th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Taurus
- Designation
- β Tauri
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.65 · 29th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- B7III
- Distance
- 134 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 05h 26m · Dec +28° 36′
A blue-white giant, around 16,000 K, like Rigel and Spica. About 87× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 310 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1892.
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 | 15:17 | 00:09 · 67° | 09:01 |
| New York EST | 16:13 | 00:04 · 78° | 07:55 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:12 | 01:14 · 63° | 07:16 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 20:32 | 01:05 · 28° | 05:39 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 69° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 26° 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 134 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 1.65 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 7.9: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 1.65 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Aldebaran: Elnath is 17° north-east of it, a fist and a half at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 69°; from 35° north it climbs to 84°; from the equator it climbs to 61°; from 35° south it climbs to 26°.
Science
Elnath’s surface is about 16,000 K, some 10,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 180 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 −1.4, about as bright as Sirius looks to us.
Did you know
Against Aldebaran, the brighter star the hop starts from: Aldebaran looks 2.1 times as bright as Elnath in our sky, but Aldebaran is 67 light-years away and Elnath 134 light-years, so side by side Elnath would give off 2.0 times as much light as Aldebaran.
Science
Elnath is the 66th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Mahasim, about 43 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 11° apart.
Look for
Elnath lies 5.4° north of the ecliptic, close enough to the Sun’s path that the Moon can pass in front of it and the planets pass near it. The Sun goes by around early June, and for weeks either side it is lost in the glare. From 50° north it is above the horizon for about 17 hours a day, from 35° north about 15 and from 35° south about 9. It is 4° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.