Star Stars · In Scorpius
Larawag
Larawag, ε Scorpii, is an orange giant in Scorpius: the 79th brightest star in the night sky.
Save the chart (SVG) Tactile chart (A4 SVG)
- Constellation
- Scorpius
- Designation
- ε Scorpii
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.29 · 79th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K2IIIb
- Distance
- 63.7 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early June
- Position (J2000)
- RA 16h 50m · Dec −34° 18′
An orange giant, around 4,900 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 48× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 39 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left in 1962.
When to see it
On the night of Tue 1 Jun 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 23:08 | 01:11 · 4° | 03:14 |
| New York EDT | 21:30 | 01:06 · 15° | 04:41 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:21 | 01:16 · 54° | 07:12 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 16:19 | 00:07 · 90° | 07:55 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Only just. At its highest it is 6° above the southern horizon, so it needs a clear, flat view that way and clean air.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes, and well placed: at its highest it passes almost overhead, 89° up, above most of the air’s haze.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early June, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late August it is highest in the early evening, and in early March not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 63.7 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.29 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 6.3: one you would need a dark country sky to see at all.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.29 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Antares: Larawag is 9.0° south-east of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it barely clears the horizon, at 6°; from 35° north it climbs to 21°; from the equator it climbs to 56°; from 35° south it climbs to 89°.
Science
Larawag’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 0.8, about as bright as Aldebaran looks to us.
Did you know
Against Antares, the brighter star the hop starts from: Antares looks 3.1 times as bright as Larawag in our sky; Antares is 554 light-years away and Larawag 64 light-years, so side by side Antares would give off 230 times as much light as Larawag.
Science
Larawag is the 25th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Kaus Borealis, about 32 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 23° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 12° north of Larawag around early 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 5 hours a day, from 35° north about 8 and from 35° south about 16. It is 7° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.