Star Stars · In Aquila
Tarazed
Tarazed, γ Aquilae, is an orange bright giant in Aquila: the 119th brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Aquila
- Designation
- γ Aquilae
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.72 · 119th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- K3II
- Distance
- 395 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- mid July
- Position (J2000)
- RA 19h 46m · Dec +10° 37′
An orange bright giant, around 4,800 K, like Arcturus and Aldebaran. About 33× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 1,000 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1631.
When to see it
On the night of Fri 16 Jul 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | 18:15 | 01:09 · 49° | 08:03 |
| New York EDT | 18:28 | 01:04 · 60° | 07:40 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:14 | 01:15 · 81° | 07:15 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | 18:35 | 00:05 · 45° | 05:35 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 51° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 44° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around mid July, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by mid October it is highest in the early evening, and in mid April not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 395 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.72 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 10.2: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.72 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Altair: Tarazed is 2.1° north-west of it, two fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 51°; from 35° north it climbs to 66°; from the equator it climbs to 79°; from 35° south it climbs to 44°.
Science
Tarazed’s surface is about 4,800 K, some 1,000 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 600 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 −2.7, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Altair, the brighter star the hop starts from: Altair looks 6.1 times as bright as Tarazed in our sky, but Altair is 17 light-years away and Tarazed 395 light-years, so side by side Tarazed would give off 92 times as much light as Altair.
Science
Tarazed is the 115th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Albireo, about 130 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 18° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 31° south of Tarazed around mid January, 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 14 hours a day, from 35° north about 13 and from 35° south about 11. It is 7° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.