Albireo
Orange bright giant · Beta Cygni
Famous gold-and-blue colour-contrast double star
Marking the head of Cygnus the Swan, Albireo is celebrated as one of the loveliest double stars for small telescopes, pairing a golden K-type bright giant with a hot blue-white companion. Whether the two are truly bound or a chance line-of-sight pairing remains debated.
Illustration generated from temperature, not a photograph
5.2 ☉
mass (the Sun = 1)
1 thousand ×
as bright as the Sun
4,358 K
surface · orange
59 R☉
radius (the Sun = 1)
390 ly
from Earth
3.2
apparent magnitude
It pours out about 1 thousand times the Sun’s light. Its light has been travelling 390 years to reach us, so you see Albireo as it was 390 years ago.
Source · View on Wikidata
It lives in
Milky Way
Barred spiral galaxy.
Other notable stars in Milky Way
Eta CarinaeLuminous blue variableAlnilamBlue supergiantVY Canis MajorisRed hypergiantAlnitakHot blue supergiantDenebBlue-white supergiantMintakaHot blue giant multiple star
Stars of similar brightness
PolarisYellow supergiant Cepheid variable1 thousand ×AchernarBlue-white main-sequence star1 thousand ×AlphardOrange giant971 ×AldebaranOrange giant439 ×RegulusBlue-white main-sequence star341 ×BellatrixHot blue giant star6 thousand ×
Worlds in the same direction on the sky→