Deneb
The tail of the Swan and a corner of the Summer Triangle, a white supergiant that shines brightly from very far away.
Tonight from
Rise, highest point and set are worked out on your device for the place above.
What it is
- Brightness
- Magnitude 1.25, the 21st brightest star in the night sky
- Distance
- About 2,600 light years, though nobody knows it well: it is too far for a sure parallax, and Hipparcos gives about 1,400
- Kind of star
- White supergiant, spectral type A2 Ia
- Light it gives out
- About 180,000 times the Sun’s, in visible light, if it is 2,600 light years away
- Constellation
- Cygnus, where it is α Cygni
- Catalogue number
- HIP 102098
Figures from HYG database 4.1 (Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star and Gliese catalogues), CC BY-SA 4.0; Schiller and Przybilla 2008, “Quantitative spectroscopy of Deneb”, Astronomy & Astrophysics 479, 849 (802 ± 66 parsecs). All sources
Near it in the sky
- M 39An open cluster in Cygnus, about a fist away.
- AlbireoAn orange bright giant in Cygnus, about a hand span away.
- VegaA white main-sequence star in Lyra, about a hand span away.
- Ring NebulaA planetary nebula in Lyra, about a hand span away.
- Dumbbell NebulaA planetary nebula in Vulpecula, about a hand span away.