α Hya. Magnitude 1.98, orange-red. Comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky.
Astronomers call it α Hya — the Bayer designation, which reads as a Greek letter ranking its brightness within its constellation. Alphard is the name people actually use.
Alphard shines at magnitude 1.98, making it comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky. Its B−V colour index of 1.44 makes it orange-red to the eye, corresponding to a surface temperature of under 4,000 K.
It sits at right ascension 9.46 hours and declination -8.7°. It straddles the celestial equator, so it is visible from essentially anywhere on Earth at the right time of year.
SkyRef shows exactly where Alphard is from your location right now — altitude, compass direction, and rise and set times.