Star Stars · In Cassiopeia
Schedar
Schedar, α Cassiopeiae, is an orange bright giant in Cassiopeia: the 73rd brightest star in the night sky.
Save the chart (SVG) Tactile chart (A4 SVG)
- Constellation
- Cassiopeia
- Designation
- α Cassiopeiae
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.24 · 73rd brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K0II-IIIvar
- Distance
- 228 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- late September
- Position (J2000)
- RA 00h 41m · Dec +56° 32′
An orange bright giant, around 5,200 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 51× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 520 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1798.
When to see it
On the night of Tue 28 Sep 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | Never sets | 01:12 · 85° | — |
| New York EDT | Never sets | 01:07 · 74° | — |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:10 | 01:17 · 35° | 07:25 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | Never rises | ||
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 17° up at its lowest.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- No. From there it never rises: you would have to travel north of 33° south before it cleared the horizon at all.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around late September, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late December it is highest in the early evening, and in late June not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 228 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.24 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 9.0: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.24 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Cih: Schedar is 4.7° south-west of it, three fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north and 35° north it is circumpolar and never sets; from the equator it climbs to 33°; from 35° south it never rises.
Science
Schedar’s surface is about 5,200 K, some 600 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 560 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 −2.0, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Cih, the brighter star the hop starts from: the two look about as bright as each other in our sky; Cih is 549 light-years away and Schedar 228 light-years, so side by side Cih would give off 6.3 times as much light as Schedar.
Science
Schedar is the 90th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Mirach, about 85 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 21° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 47° south of Schedar around late March, when it is highest at noon, in daylight: the weeks either side are its worst time of year. It is 6° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.