Star Stars · In Perseus
Mirfak
Mirfak, α Persei, is a yellow-white supergiant in Perseus: the 36th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Perseus
- Designation
- α Persei
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.79 · 36th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- F5Ib
- Distance
- 506 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early November
- Position (J2000)
- RA 03h 24m · Dec +49° 52′
A yellow-white supergiant, around 6,800 K, like Procyon. About 77× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 3,900 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1520.
When to see it
On the night of Mon 9 Nov 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | Never sets | 00:10 · 88° | — |
| New York EST | Never sets | 00:04 · 81° | — |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:09 | 01:15 · 41° | 07:20 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 22:38 | 01:06 · 6° | 03:33 |
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 10° up at its lowest.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Only just. At its highest it is 5° above the northern horizon, so it needs a clear, flat view that way and clean air.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early November, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by early February it is highest in the early evening, and in early August not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 506 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 1.79 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 10.8: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 1.79 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Capella: Mirfak is 19° west of it, a spread hand at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it is circumpolar and never sets; from 35° north it climbs to 75°; from the equator it climbs to 40°; from 35° south it barely clears the horizon, at 5°.
Science
Mirfak’s surface is about 6,800 K, some 1,000 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 430 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 −4.2, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Capella, the brighter star the hop starts from: Capella looks 4.8 times as bright as Mirfak in our sky, but Capella is 43 light-years away and Mirfak 506 light-years, so side by side Mirfak would give off 29 times as much light as Capella.
Science
Mirfak is the 129th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Almach, about 170 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 16° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 30° south of Mirfak around early May, 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 19 hours a day and from 35° south about 5. It is 6° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.