Star Stars · In Sagittarius
Kaus Media
Kaus Media, δ Sagittarii, is an orange giant in Sagittarius: the 118th brightest star in the night sky.
Save the chart (SVG) Tactile chart (A4 SVG)
- Constellation
- Sagittarius
- Designation
- δ Sagittarii
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.72 · 118th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K3III
- Distance
- 348 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- late June
- Position (J2000)
- RA 18h 21m · Dec −29° 50′
An orange giant, around 4,800 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 33× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 780 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1678.
When to see it
On the night of Thu 24 Jun 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 22:16 | 01:11 · 9° | 04:06 |
| New York EDT | 21:05 | 01:06 · 19° | 05:07 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:21 | 01:16 · 59° | 07:12 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 16:38 | 00:07 · 86° | 07:37 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 10° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes, and well placed: at its highest it passes almost overhead, 85° up, above most of the air’s haze.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around late June, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late September it is highest in the early evening, and in late March not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 348 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.72 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 9.9: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.72 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Kaus Australis: Kaus Media is 4.6° north of it, three fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 10°; from 35° north it climbs to 25°; from the equator it climbs to 60°; from 35° south it climbs to 85°.
Science
Kaus Media’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 −2.4, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Kaus Australis, the brighter star the hop starts from: Kaus Australis looks 2.4 times as bright as Kaus Media in our sky, but Kaus Australis is 143 light-years away and Kaus Media 348 light-years, so side by side Kaus Media would give off 2.5 times as much light as Kaus Australis.
Science
Kaus Media is the 105th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Sargas, about 100 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 16° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 6.5° north of Kaus Media around late December, 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 6 hours a day, from 35° north about 9 and from 35° south about 15. It is 7° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.