Star Stars · In Pegasus
Enif
Enif, ε Pegasi, is an orange supergiant in Pegasus: the 84th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Pegasus
- Designation
- ε Pegasi
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.38 · 84th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K2Ibvar
- Distance
- 690 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid August
- Position (J2000)
- RA 21h 44m · Dec +09° 53′
An orange supergiant, around 4,900 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 44× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 4,200 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1336.
When to see it
On the night of Sun 15 Aug 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 18:19 | 01:09 · 48° | 07:59 |
| New York EDT | 18:30 | 01:04 · 59° | 07:37 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:14 | 01:14 · 81° | 07:14 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 18:33 | 00:05 · 46° | 05:37 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 50° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 45° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid August, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid November it is highest in the early evening, and in mid May not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 690 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.38 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 11.4: too faint for anything less than a telescope.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.38 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Altair: Enif is 28° east of it, about three fists at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 50°; from 35° north it climbs to 65°; from the equator it climbs to 80°; from 35° south it climbs to 45°.
Science
Enif’s surface is about 4,900 K, some 900 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 590 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 −4.2, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Altair, the brighter star the hop starts from: Altair looks 4.4 times as bright as Enif in our sky, but Altair is 17 light-years away and Enif 690 light-years, so side by side Enif would give off 380 times as much light as Altair.
Science
Enif is the 142nd nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Sadalmelik, about 210 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 12° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 22° south of Enif around mid February, 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 31° from the plane of the Milky Way.