Star Stars · In Pegasus
Markab
Markab, α Pegasi, is a blue-white giant in Pegasus: the 94th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Pegasus
- Designation
- α Pegasi
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.49 · 94th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- B9.5III
- Distance
- 133 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early September
- Position (J2000)
- RA 23h 05m · Dec +15° 12′
A blue-white giant, around 11,000 K, like Rigel and Spica. About 40× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 140 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1893.
When to see it
On the night of Sat 4 Sep 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 17:51 | 01:11 · 54° | 08:30 |
| New York EDT | 18:12 | 01:05 · 65° | 07:59 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:15 | 01:16 · 76° | 07:16 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 18:50 | 00:07 · 41° | 05:24 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 55° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 40° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early September, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by early December it is highest in the early evening, and in early June not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 133 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.49 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 7.9: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.49 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Scheat: Markab is 13° south of it, a fist and a half at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 55°; from 35° north it climbs to 70°; from the equator it climbs to 75°; from 35° south it climbs to 40°.
Science
Markab’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 −0.6, about as bright as Canopus looks to us.
Did you know
Against Scheat, the brighter star the hop starts from: the two look about as bright as each other in our sky; Scheat is 196 light-years away and Markab 133 light-years, so side by side Scheat would give off 2.3 times as much light as Markab.
Science
Markab is the 65th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Alpheratz, about 54 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 20° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 19° south of Markab around early March, 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 14 hours a day, from 35° north about 13 and from 35° south about 11. It is 40° from the plane of the Milky Way.