SkyRef / Stars

Hamal

α Ari. Magnitude 2.00, orange-red. Comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky.

The numbers

Designationα Ari
Magnitude2.00
Colourorange-red
Right ascension2.120h
Declination+23.46°
B−V index1.15
CatalogueHR 617

What you are looking at

Astronomers call it α Ari — the Bayer designation, which reads as a Greek letter ranking its brightness within its constellation. Hamal is the name people actually use.

Hamal shines at magnitude 2.00, making it comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky. Its B−V colour index of 1.15 makes it orange-red to the eye, corresponding to a surface temperature of under 4,000 K.

It sits at right ascension 2.12 hours and declination +23.5°. It sits well north on the sky and is comfortably placed for northern hemisphere observers.

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