# Elnath (Beta Tauri)

Elnath (Beta Tauri) is a star in the constellation Taurus, magnitude 1.6.

**The tip of the Bull’s horn — a star once shared with the Charioteer, with an odd taste for manganese.**

Elnath lives on a border. Ptolemy counted it as part of both Taurus and Auriga, and Johann Bayer gave it two labels, Beta Tauri and Gamma Aurigae. Only when constellation boundaries were fixed in 1930 did it settle in Taurus, at the tip of the Bull’s northern horn. Its name is Arabic for ‘the butting’ — the Bull’s horns.

It is a blue-white giant [star](https://astropilot.space/glossary/star), about 700 times as luminous as the Sun and nearly five times its width. Its light carries a chemical oddity. It is a mercury-manganese star, with unusually strong signs of some heavy elements: plenty of manganese, but little calcium and magnesium. Its mercury lines are weak, though, so some astronomers file it under other peculiar types.

Elnath (Beta Tauri) is 130 light-years away: the light we see from it set off around 1895, 7 years before the Wright brothers made the first powered flight.

## Did you know?

- **Five Chariots.** In Chinese astronomy Elnath is the fifth star of the Five Chariots, a pattern it shares with Capella and other stars of Auriga.
- **Hidden by the Moon.** Elnath lies close enough to the Moon’s path to be occulted. Most of these events are visible only from the Southern Hemisphere, but they occasionally reach as far north as southern California.

A bright blue-white star at the tip of the Bull’s northern horn, where it also closes the pentagon of Auriga. Sweep binoculars north of it to find the star clusters M36, M37 and M38 in Auriga.

## When and where to see it

It is best placed in the evening sky around January, when it crosses the meridian at about 10 pm local time (around midnight in December). It can be seen from everywhere north of 61°S and never sets north of 61°N.

At its highest it stands 69° up from 50°N, 84° up from 35°N, 61° up from the equator, 26° up from 35°S.

## Facts

- Type: Star
- Constellation: Taurus
- Designations: Beta Tauri, β Tau, 112 Tau, HR 1791, HD 35497, HIP 25428
- Magnitude: 1.6
- Position: RA 5h 26.3m, Dec +28° 36′ (J2000)
- Spectral type: B7III
- Colour: blue-white (B−V -0.13)
- Distance: 130 light-years
- Discovered: Known since antiquity

Open AstroPilot to see when Elnath (Beta Tauri) is highest tonight from your location, how easy it is with your telescope or binoculars, and an eyepiece view. https://astropilot.space/object/elnath