Star Stars · In Corvus
Gienah
Gienah, γ Corvi, is a blue-white giant in Corvus: the 102nd brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Corvus
- Designation
- γ Corvi
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.58 · 102nd brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- B8III
- Distance
- 154 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- late March
- Position (J2000)
- RA 12h 16m · Dec −17° 33′
A blue-white giant, around 14,000 K, like Rigel and Spica. About 37× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 170 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1872.
When to see it
On the night of Wed 24 Mar 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 19:44 | 00:08 · 21° | 04:33 |
| New York EDT | 20:08 | 01:03 · 32° | 05:58 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:16 | 01:14 · 71° | 07:11 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 18:16 | 01:05 · 74° | 07:53 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 22° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 73° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around late March, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late June it is highest in the early evening, and in late December not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 154 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.58 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 8.2: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.58 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Spica: Gienah is 18° south-west of it, a spread hand at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 22°; from 35° north it climbs to 37°; from the equator it climbs to 72°; from 35° south it climbs to 73°.
Science
Gienah’s surface is about 14,000 K, some 8,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 210 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 −0.8.
Did you know
Against Spica, the brighter star the hop starts from: Spica looks 4.4 times as bright as Gienah in our sky; Spica is 250 light-years away and Gienah 154 light-years, so side by side Spica would give off 12 times as much light as Gienah.
Science
Gienah is the 71st nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Kraz, about 21 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 7.3° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 15° north of Gienah around late 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 9 hours a day, from 35° north about 10 and from 35° south about 14. It is 45° from the plane of the Milky Way.