Star Stars · In Draco
Rastaban
Rastaban, β Draconis, is a yellow bright giant in Draco: the 132nd brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Draco
- Designation
- β Draconis
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.79 · 132nd brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- G2II
- Distance
- 380 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid June
- Position (J2000)
- RA 17h 30m · Dec +52° 18′
A yellow bright giant, around 5,800 K, like the Sun. About 30× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 870 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1646.
When to see it
On the night of Fri 11 Jun 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | Never sets | 01:11 · 89° | — |
| New York EDT | Never sets | 01:05 · 78° | — |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:10 | 01:16 · 39° | 07:22 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 22:08 | 00:07 · 4° | 02:06 |
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 12° up at its lowest.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Only just. At its highest it is 3° 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 mid June, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid September it is highest in the early evening, and in mid March not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 380 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.79 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 10.1: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.79 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Eltanin: Rastaban is 4.1° west of it, three fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it is circumpolar and never sets; from 35° north it climbs to 73°; from the equator it climbs to 38°; from 35° south it barely clears the horizon, at 3°.
Science
Rastaban’s surface is about 5,800 K, close to the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 500 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 −2.5, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Eltanin, the brighter star the hop starts from: Eltanin looks 1.7 times as bright as Rastaban in our sky, but Eltanin is 154 light-years away and Rastaban 380 light-years, so side by side Rastaban would give off 3.7 times as much light as Eltanin.
Science
Rastaban is the 108th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Thuban, about 180 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 29° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 75° south of Rastaban around mid December, 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 21 hours a day and from 35° south about 3. It is 33° from the plane of the Milky Way.