β UMi. Magnitude 2.08, orange-red. Comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky.
Astronomers call it β UMi — the Bayer designation, which reads as a Greek letter ranking its brightness within its constellation. Kochab is the name people actually use.
Kochab shines at magnitude 2.08, making it comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky. Its B−V colour index of 1.47 makes it orange-red to the eye, corresponding to a surface temperature of under 4,000 K.
It sits at right ascension 14.85 hours and declination +74.2°. It is circumpolar from most of the northern hemisphere, meaning it never sets and can be found on any clear night.
SkyRef shows exactly where Kochab is from your location right now — altitude, compass direction, and rise and set times.