Star Stars · In Ophiuchus
Sabik
Sabik, η Ophiuchi, is a white main-sequence star in Ophiuchus: the 88th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Ophiuchus
- Designation
- η Ophiuchi
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.43 · 88th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- A2.5Va
- Distance
- 88.4 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early June
- Position (J2000)
- RA 17h 10m · Dec −15° 43′
A white main-sequence star, around 9,400 K, like Sirius and Vega. About 42× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 66 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1938.
When to see it
On the night of Sun 6 Jun 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 20:35 | 01:11 · 23° | 05:47 |
| New York EDT | 20:03 | 01:06 · 34° | 06:09 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:19 | 01:17 · 73° | 07:14 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 17:25 | 00:08 · 72° | 06:50 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 24° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 71° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early June, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by early September it is highest in the early evening, and in early March not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 88.4 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.43 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 7.0: 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 2.43 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Antares: Sabik is 14° north-east of it, a fist and a half at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 24°; from 35° north it climbs to 39°; from the equator it climbs to 74°; from 35° south it climbs to 71°.
Science
Sabik’s surface is about 9,400 K, some 3,600 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 310 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 0.3, about as bright as Rigel looks to us.
Did you know
Against Antares, the brighter star the hop starts from: Antares looks 3.5 times as bright as Sabik in our sky; Antares is 554 light-years away and Sabik 88 light-years, so side by side Antares would give off 140 times as much light as Sabik.
Science
Sabik is the 46th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Kaus Borealis, about 31 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 21° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 7.2° south of Sabik around early December, 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 9 hours a day, from 35° north about 10 and from 35° south about 13. It is 14° from the plane of the Milky Way.