Star Stars · In Lepus
Nihal
Nihal, β Leporis, is a yellow bright giant in Lepus: the 134th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Lepus
- Designation
- β Leporis
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.81 · 134th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- G5II
- Distance
- 160 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 05h 28m · Dec −20° 46′
A yellow bright giant, around 5,600 K, like the Sun. About 30× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 150 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1866.
When to see it
On the night of Thu 10 Dec 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 20:05 | 00:11 · 18° | 04:16 |
| New York EST | 19:22 | 00:05 · 29° | 04:48 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:19 | 01:16 · 68° | 07:13 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 18:09 | 01:07 · 77° | 08:05 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 19° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 76° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early 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 early September not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 160 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.81 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 8.3: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.81 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Arneb: Nihal is 3.1° south of it, two fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 19°; from 35° north it climbs to 34°; from the equator it climbs to 69°; from 35° south it climbs to 76°.
Science
Nihal’s surface is about 5,600 K, some 200 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 520 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 −0.6, about as bright as Canopus looks to us.
Did you know
Against Arneb, the brighter star the hop starts from: the two look about as bright as each other in our sky; Arneb is 2,219 light-years away and Nihal 160 light-years, so side by side Arneb would give off 240 times as much light as Nihal.
Science
Nihal is the 73rd nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Cursa, about 79 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 16° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 44° north of Nihal around mid June, 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 8 hours a day, from 35° north about 10 and from 35° south about 14. It is 27° from the plane of the Milky Way.