Star Stars · In Gemini
Tejat
Tejat, μ Geminorum, is a red giant in Gemini: the 151st brightest star in the night sky.
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- Constellation
- Gemini
- Designation
- μ Geminorum
- Apparent magnitude
- 2.87 · 151st brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- M3IIIvar
- Distance
- 232 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- late December
- Position (J2000)
- RA 06h 23m · Dec +22° 31′
A red giant, around 3,300 K, like Betelgeuse and Antares. About 28× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 300 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1794.
When to see it
On the night of Thu 24 Dec 2026, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT | 16:06 | 00:10 · 61° | 08:15 |
| New York EST | 16:43 | 00:05 · 72° | 07:28 |
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:15 | 01:16 · 69° | 07:17 |
| Sydney GMT+11 | 20:12 | 01:07 · 34° | 06:01 |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 63° up in the south.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes. It rises and sets, and at its highest it stands 32° up in the north.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around late December, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late March it is highest in the early evening, and in late September not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 232 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 2.87 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 9.1: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 2.87 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Alhena: Tejat is 7.0° north-west of it, three fingers at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north it climbs to 63°; from 35° north it climbs to 78°; from the equator it climbs to 67°; from 35° south it climbs to 32°.
Science
Tejat’s surface is about 3,300 K, some 2,500 K cooler than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 880 nm, in the infrared, past the red 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 Sirius looks to us.
Did you know
Against Alhena, the brighter star the hop starts from: Alhena looks 2.4 times as bright as Tejat in our sky, but Alhena is 109 light-years away and Tejat 232 light-years, so side by side Tejat would give off 1.9 times as much light as Alhena.
Science
Tejat is the 91st nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Mahasim, about 85 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 16° apart.
Look for
Tejat lies 0.8° south of the ecliptic, close enough to the Sun’s path that the Moon can pass in front of it and the planets pass near it. The Sun goes by around late June, and for weeks either side it is lost in the glare. 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 4° from the plane of the Milky Way, inside the band a dark sky shows.