Star Stars · In Virgo
Porrima
Porrima, γ Virginis, is a yellow-white main-sequence star in Virgo: the 123rd brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Virgo
- Designation
- γ Virginis
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.74 · 123rd brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- F0V+
- Distance
- 38.1 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- late March
- Position (J2000)
- RA 12h 42m · Dec −01° 27′
A yellow-white main-sequence star, around 7,500 K, like Procyon. About 32× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 9 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left in 1988.
When to see it
On the night of Tue 30 Mar 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 19:19 | 01:10 · 37° | 07:01 |
| New York EDT | 19:12 | 01:05 · 48° | 06:59 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:17 | 01:16 · 87° | 07:15 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 19:03 | 01:07 · 58° | 07:10 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 39° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 56° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around late March, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late June it is highest in the early evening, and in late December not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 38.1 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.74 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 5.1: 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 2.74 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Spica: Porrima is 15° north-west of it, a fist and a half at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 39°; from 35° north it climbs to 54°; from the equator it climbs to 89°; from 35° south it climbs to 56°.
Science
Porrima’s surface is about 7,500 K, some 1,700 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 390 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 2.4, about as bright as Ankaa looks to us.
Did you know
Against Spica, the brighter star the hop starts from: Spica looks 5.1 times as bright as Porrima in our sky; Spica is 250 light-years away and Porrima 38 light-years, so side by side Spica would give off 220 times as much light as Porrima.
Science
Porrima is the 13th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Denebola, about 13 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 21° apart.
Look for
Porrima lies 2.8° north of the ecliptic, close enough to the Sun’s path that the Moon can pass in front of it and the planets pass near it. The Sun goes by around late September, and for weeks either side it is lost in the glare. From 50° north it is above the horizon for about 12 hours a day, from 35° north about 12 and from 35° south about 12. It is 61° from the plane of the Milky Way, well away from the band.