Star Stars · In Vela
Suhail
Suhail, λ Velorum, is an orange supergiant in Vela: the 70th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Vela
- Designation
- λ Velorum
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.23 · 70th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K4Ib-II
- Distance
- 545 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- early February
- Position (J2000)
- RA 09h 08m · Dec −43° 26′
An orange supergiant, around 4,600 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 51× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 3,000 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1481.
When to see it
On the night of Thu 4 Feb 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | Never rises | ||
| New York EST | 21:44 | 00:04 · 6° | 02:24 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:21 | 01:15 · 45° | 07:09 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 16:28 | 01:06 · 80° | 09:43 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- No. From there it never rises: you would have to travel south of 46° north before it cleared the horizon at all.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes, and well placed: at its highest it passes almost overhead, 82° up, above most of the air’s haze.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around early February, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by early May it is highest in the early evening, and in early November not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 545 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.23 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 10.9: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.23 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Regor: Suhail is 11° east of it, a fist at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it never rises; from 35° north it climbs to 12°; from the equator it climbs to 47°; from 35° south it climbs to 82°.
Science
Suhail’s surface is about 4,600 K, some 1,200 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 630 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 −3.9, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Regor, the brighter star the hop starts from: Regor looks 1.6 times as bright as Suhail in our sky; Regor is 1,117 light-years away and Suhail 545 light-years, so side by side Regor would give off 6.5 times as much light as Suhail.
Science
Suhail is the 133rd nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Markeb, about 120 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 12° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 56° north of Suhail around early August, 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 6 hours a day and from 35° south about 17. It is 3° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.