Star Stars · In Aries
Sheratan
Sheratan, β Arietis, is a white main-sequence star in Aries: the 106th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Aries
- Designation
- β Arietis
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.64 · 106th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- A5V
- Distance
- 58.7 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid October
- Position (J2000)
- RA 01h 55m · Dec +20° 48′
A white main-sequence star, around 8,800 K, like Sirius and Vega. About 35× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 24 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left in 1967.
When to see it
On the night of Sun 17 Oct 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 17:17 | 01:11 · 59° | 09:05 |
| New York EDT | 17:50 | 01:06 · 70° | 08:22 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:15 | 01:16 · 70° | 07:18 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 20:08 | 01:07 · 35° | 06:07 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 61° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 34° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid October, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid January it is highest in the early evening, and in mid July not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 58.7 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.64 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 6.1: 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 2.64 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Hamal: Sheratan is 3.9° south-west of it, three fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 61°; from 35° north it climbs to 76°; from the equator it climbs to 69°; from 35° south it climbs to 34°.
Science
Sheratan’s surface is about 8,800 K, some 3,000 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 330 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 1.4, about as bright as Regulus looks to us.
Did you know
Against Hamal, the brighter star the hop starts from: Hamal looks 1.8 times as bright as Sheratan in our sky; Hamal is 66 light-years away and Sheratan 59 light-years, so side by side Hamal would give off 2.2 times as much light as Sheratan.
Science
Sheratan is the 21st nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Hamal, about 8 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 3.9° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 8.5° south of Sheratan around mid April, 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 16 hours a day, from 35° north about 14 and from 35° south about 10. It is 40° from the plane of the Milky Way.