SkyRef / Stars

Kaus Borealis

λ Sgr. Magnitude 2.81, orange-red. Comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky.

The numbers

Designationλ Sgr
Magnitude2.81
Colourorange-red
Right ascension18.466h
Declination-25.42°
B−V index1.04
CatalogueHR 6913

What you are looking at

Astronomers call it λ Sgr — the Bayer designation, which reads as a Greek letter ranking its brightness within its constellation. Kaus Borealis is the name people actually use.

Kaus Borealis shines at magnitude 2.81, making it comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky. Its B−V colour index of 1.04 makes it orange-red to the eye, corresponding to a surface temperature of under 4,000 K.

It sits at right ascension 18.47 hours and declination -25.4°. It lies south of the celestial equator and sits low for northern observers, better the further south you go.

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