Star Stars · In Centaurus
Menkent
Menkent, θ Centauri, is an orange giant in Centaurus: the 55th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Centaurus
- Designation
- θ Centauri
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.06 · 55th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K0IIIb
- Distance
- 58.8 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- late April
- Position (J2000)
- RA 14h 07m · Dec −36° 22′
An orange giant, around 5,200 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 60× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 41 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left in 1967.
When to see it
On the night of Wed 21 Apr 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 23:43 | 01:09 · 2° | 02:35 |
| New York EDT | 21:42 | 01:04 · 13° | 04:25 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:19 | 01:14 · 52° | 07:09 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 16:07 | 00:05 · 87° | 08:03 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Only just. At its highest it is 4° 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 late April, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late July it is highest in the early evening, and in mid January not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 58.8 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.06 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 6.1: 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 2.06 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Hadar: Menkent is 24° north of it, a spread hand at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it barely clears the horizon, at 4°; from 35° north it climbs to 19°; from the equator it climbs to 54°; from 35° south it climbs to 89°.
Science
Menkent’s surface is about 5,200 K, some 600 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 560 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 Acrux looks to us.
Did you know
Against Hadar, the brighter star the hop starts from: Hadar looks 3.8 times as bright as Menkent in our sky; Hadar is 392 light-years away and Menkent 59 light-years, so side by side Hadar would give off 170 times as much light as Menkent.
Science
Menkent is the 23rd nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Kulou, about 9 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 9.3° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 22° north of Menkent around mid October, 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 4 hours a day, from 35° north about 8 and from 35° south about 16. It is 24° from the plane of the Milky Way.