Monoceros
Mon · genitive Monocerotis · equatorial sky
At a glance
- Catalogued stars
- 139
- Visible to the eye
- 139 stars
- Brightest star
- 11Bet Mon (3.76)
- Best seen
- January
- Declination span
- -9.6° to +9.9°
- Nearest star
- HD 59380 · 88.8 ly
Best from the northern hemisphere; it rises for observers between about 80°S and 80°N.
When and where to look for Monoceros
Monoceros 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 -9.6° to +9.9°, so best from the northern hemisphere; it rises for observers between about 80°S and 80°N.
The quickest way to find it is to open the live AR sky map and point your phone at the sky — if Monoceros is above your horizon right now, its figure is drawn in the position it genuinely occupies above you.
Brightest stars in Monoceros
| Star | Mag | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11Bet Mon | 3.76 | B3Ve | 676.7 ly |
| 26Alp Mon | 3.94 | K0III | 147.8 ly |
| 5Gam Mon | 3.99 | K3III | 497.9 ly |
| 22Del Mon | 4.15 | A2V | 384.2 ly |
| 29Zet Mon | 4.36 | G2Ib | 1,058.9 ly |
| 8Eps Mon | 4.39 | A5IV | 122.3 ly |
Magnitude runs backwards: lower numbers are brighter, and anything below about 6.5 is beyond the naked eye under a dark sky.
What Monoceros is made of
The catalogue lists 139 stars within Monoceros, of which 139 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 59380 at 88.8 light years. The most distant is HD 48434 at roughly 2,861 light years — stars that appear side by side here are nothing of the sort.