α Car. Magnitude -0.72, white. One of the very brightest stars in the entire sky.
Astronomers call it α Car — the Bayer designation, which reads as a Greek letter ranking its brightness within its constellation. Canopus is the name people actually use.
Canopus shines at magnitude -0.72, making it one of the very brightest stars in the entire sky. Its B−V colour index of 0.15 makes it white to the eye, corresponding to a surface temperature of around 8,000 K.
It sits at right ascension 6.40 hours and declination -52.7°. It lies south of the celestial equator and sits low for northern observers, better the further south you go.
SkyRef shows exactly where Canopus is from your location right now — altitude, compass direction, and rise and set times.