Star Stars · In Ursa Major
Merak
Merak, β Ursae Majoris, is a white main-sequence star in Ursa Major: the 82nd brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Ursa Major
- Designation
- β Ursae Majoris
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.34 · 82nd brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- A1V
- Distance
- 79.7 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early March
- Position (J2000)
- RA 11h 02m · Dec +56° 23′
A white main-sequence star, around 9,800 K, like Sirius and Vega. About 46× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 58 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left in 1946.
When to see it
On the night of Fri 5 Mar 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | Never sets | 00:09 · 85° | — |
| New York EST | Never sets | 00:04 · 74° | — |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:08 | 01:15 · 35° | 07:22 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | Never rises | ||
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes, on any clear night of the year. From there it never sets: it is circumpolar, circling the pole and still 16° up at its lowest.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- No. From there it never rises: you would have to travel north of 33° south before it cleared the horizon at all.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early March, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by early June it is highest in the early evening, and in early December not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 79.7 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.34 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 2.34 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Dubhe: Merak is 5.4° south of it, three fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north and 35° north it is circumpolar and never sets; from the equator it climbs to 34°; from 35° south it never rises.
Science
Merak’s surface is about 9,800 K, some 4,000 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 300 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 0.4, about as bright as Procyon looks to us.
Did you know
Against Dubhe, the brighter star the hop starts from: Dubhe looks 1.6 times as bright as Merak in our sky; Dubhe is 123 light-years away and Merak 80 light-years, so side by side Dubhe would give off 3.9 times as much light as Merak.
Science
Merak is the 34th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Phecda, about 12 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 7.9° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 45° south of Merak around early September, when it is highest at noon, in daylight: the weeks either side are its worst time of year. It is 55° from the plane of the Milky Way, well away from the band.