Star Stars · In Orion
Saiph
Saiph, κ Orionis, is a blue-white supergiant in Orion: the 58th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Orion
- Designation
- κ Orionis
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.07 · 58th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- B0.5Iavar
- Distance
- 647 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 05h 48m · Dec −09° 40′
A blue-white supergiant, around 29,000 K, like Rigel and Spica. About 59× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 4,900 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1379.
When to see it
On the night of Tue 15 Dec 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 19:01 | 00:10 · 29° | 05:20 |
| New York EST | 18:40 | 00:05 · 40° | 05:31 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:18 | 01:16 · 79° | 07:14 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 18:42 | 01:07 · 66° | 07:32 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 30° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 65° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid 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 mid September not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 647 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.07 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 11.3: too faint for anything less than a telescope.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.07 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Alnitak: Saiph is 7.9° south of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 30°; from 35° north it climbs to 45°; from the equator it climbs to 80°; from 35° south it climbs to 65°.
Science
Saiph’s surface is about 29,000 K, some 23,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 100 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 −4.4, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Alnitak, the brighter star the hop starts from: Alnitak looks 1.4 times as bright as Saiph in our sky; Alnitak is 736 light-years away and Saiph 647 light-years, so side by side Alnitak would give off 1.8 times as much light as Saiph.
Science
Saiph is the 141st nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Mintaka, about 130 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 10° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 33° north of Saiph 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 10 hours a day, from 35° north about 11 and from 35° south about 13. It is 18° from the plane of the Milky Way.