α Per. Magnitude 1.79, yellow-white. Comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky.
Astronomers call it α Per — the Bayer designation, which reads as a Greek letter ranking its brightness within its constellation. Mirfak is the name people actually use.
Mirfak shines at magnitude 1.79, making it comfortably visible to the naked eye from a suburban sky. Its B−V colour index of 0.48 makes it yellow-white to the eye, corresponding to a surface temperature of around 6,000 K.
It sits at right ascension 3.41 hours and declination +49.9°. It sits well north on the sky and is comfortably placed for northern hemisphere observers.
SkyRef shows exactly where Mirfak is from your location right now — altitude, compass direction, and rise and set times.