Star Stars · In Cygnus
Fawaris
Fawaris, δ Cygni, is a blue-white giant in Cygnus: the 150th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Cygnus
- Designation
- δ Cygni
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.86 · 150th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- B9.5III
- Distance
- 165 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid July
- Position (J2000)
- RA 19h 45m · Dec +45° 08′
A blue-white giant, around 11,000 K, like Rigel and Spica. About 29× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 150 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1861.
When to see it
On the night of Thu 15 Jul 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | Never sets | 01:11 · 84° | — |
| New York EDT | 15:08 | 01:06 · 86° | 11:05 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:12 | 01:17 · 46° | 07:21 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 20:58 | 00:08 · 11° | 03:17 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes, on any clear night of the year. From there it never sets: it is circumpolar, circling the pole and still 5° up at its lowest.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Only just. At its highest it is 10° above the northern horizon, so it needs a clear, flat view that way and clean air.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid July, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid October it is highest in the early evening, and in mid April not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 165 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.86 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 8.3: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.86 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Sadr: Fawaris is 8.4° north-west of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it is circumpolar and never sets; from 35° north it climbs to 80°; from the equator it climbs to 45°; from 35° south it barely clears the horizon, at 10°.
Science
Fawaris’s surface is about 11,000 K, some 5,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 260 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 −0.7, about as bright as Canopus looks to us.
Did you know
Against Sadr, the brighter star the hop starts from: Sadr looks 1.8 times as bright as Fawaris in our sky; Sadr is 1,832 light-years away and Fawaris 165 light-years, so side by side Sadr would give off 220 times as much light as Fawaris.
Science
Fawaris is the 76th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Eltanin, about 54 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 19° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 64° south of Fawaris around mid January, when it is highest at noon, in daylight: the weeks either side are its worst time of year. From 35° north it is above the horizon for about 18 hours a day and from 35° south about 6. It is 10° from the plane of the Milky Way.