Lynx
Lyn · genitive Lyncis · northern sky
At a glance
- Catalogued stars
- 100
- Visible to the eye
- 100 stars
- Brightest star
- 40Alp Lyn (3.14)
- Best seen
- January
- Declination span
- +34.4° to +59.0°
- Nearest star
- HD 76943 · 52.4 ly
Visible from everywhere north of about 31°S.
When and where to look for Lynx
Lynx crosses the meridian — its highest point in the sky — at local midnight around January, which makes the months from December to February the easiest time to find it in the evening. It spans declinations +34.4° to +59.0°, so visible from everywhere north of about 31°S.
The quickest way to find it is to open the live AR sky map and point your phone at the sky — if Lynx is above your horizon right now, its figure is drawn in the position it genuinely occupies above you.
Brightest stars in Lynx
| Star | Mag | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40Alp Lyn | 3.14 | M0IIIvar | 203.1 ly |
| 38 Lyn | 3.82 | A1V | 124.8 ly |
| HD 76943 | 3.96 | F5V | 52.4 ly |
| Alsciaukat31 Lyn | 4.25 | K5III | 382.4 ly |
| 15 Lyn | 4.35 | G5III-IV | 178.3 ly |
| 2 Lyn | 4.44 | A2Vs | 156.6 ly |
Magnitude runs backwards: lower numbers are brighter, and anything below about 6.5 is beyond the naked eye under a dark sky.
What Lynx is made of
The catalogue lists 100 stars within Lynx, of which 100 are magnitude 6.5 or brighter — the limit of what an unaided eye picks up under a genuinely dark sky. The rest need binoculars or a telescope.
Spectral make-up
Spectral class is a temperature ordering, running from O at around 30,000 K down to M below 3,500 K. A constellation is a direction, not a group, so this is simply what happens to lie along that line of sight.
The closest catalogued star in this direction is HD 76943 at 52.4 light years. The most distant is HD 52860 at roughly 1,348 light years — stars that appear side by side here are nothing of the sort.