Star Stars · In Auriga
Hassaleh
Hassaleh, ι Aurigae, is an orange bright giant in Auriga: the 113th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Auriga
- Designation
- ι Aurigae
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.69 · 113th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K3IIvar
- Distance
- 493 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 04h 57m · Dec +33° 10′
An orange bright giant, around 4,800 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 33× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 1,600 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1533.
When to see it
On the night of Wed 2 Dec 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 14:31 | 00:11 · 72° | 09:51 |
| New York EST | 15:50 | 00:06 · 82° | 08:22 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:14 | 01:17 · 58° | 07:19 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 20:53 | 01:08 · 23° | 05:23 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 73° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 22° 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 early 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 493 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.69 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 10.7: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.69 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Elnath: Hassaleh is 7.8° north-west of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 73°; from 35° north it climbs to 88°; from the equator it climbs to 57°; from 35° south it climbs to 22°.
Science
Hassaleh’s surface is about 4,800 K, some 1,000 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 600 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 −3.2, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Elnath, the brighter star the hop starts from: Elnath looks 2.6 times as bright as Hassaleh in our sky, but Elnath is 134 light-years away and Hassaleh 493 light-years, so side by side Hassaleh would give off 5.2 times as much light as Elnath.
Science
Hassaleh is the 127th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Tianguan, about 130 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 15° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 10° south of Hassaleh around early June, 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 19 hours a day, from 35° north about 16 and from 35° south about 8. It is 6° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.