Star Stars · In Auriga
Menkalinan
Menkalinan, β Aurigae, is a white main-sequence star in Auriga: the 43rd brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Auriga
- Designation
- β Aurigae
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.90 · 43rd brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- A2V
- Distance
- 81.1 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 06h 00m · Dec +44° 57′
A white main-sequence star, around 9,500 K, like Sirius and Vega. About 69× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 90 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1945.
When to see it
On the night of Fri 18 Dec 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | Never sets | 00:11 · 83° | — |
| New York EST | 14:11 | 00:06 · 86° | 10:01 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:12 | 01:16 · 46° | 07:21 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 21:56 | 01:07 · 11° | 04:19 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes, on any clear night of the year — it is circumpolar from there and never quite sets, though at its lowest it skims the horizon, where trees and haze will hide it.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 10° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid December, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid March it is highest in the early evening, and in mid September not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 81.1 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 1.90 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 6.8: 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 1.90 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Capella: Menkalinan is 7.6° east of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it is circumpolar and never sets; from 35° north it climbs to 80°; from the equator it climbs to 45°; from 35° south it climbs to 10°.
Science
Menkalinan’s surface is about 9,500 K, some 3,700 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 310 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 −0.1, about as bright as Arcturus looks to us.
Did you know
Against Capella, the brighter star the hop starts from: Capella looks 5.3 times as bright as Menkalinan in our sky; Capella is 43 light-years away and Menkalinan 81 light-years, so side by side Capella would give off 1.5 times as much light as Menkalinan.
Science
Menkalinan is the 36th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Capella, about 39 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 7.6° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 22° south of Menkalinan around mid June, when it is highest at noon, in daylight: the weeks either side are its worst time of year. From 35° north it is above the horizon for about 18 hours a day and from 35° south about 6. It is 10° from the plane of the Milky Way.