# Schedar (Alpha Cassiopeiae)

Schedar (Alpha Cassiopeiae) is a star in the constellation Cassiopeia, magnitude 2.2.

**The queen’s breast — an orange giant in Cassiopeia’s W that once shone blue-white.**

Cassiopeia was the boastful queen of Ethiopia, and Schedar marks her breast: its name comes from the Arabic ṣadr, “chest”. On Gerardus Mercator’s celestial globe of 1551 she is chained to a chair as punishment, with Schedar near her left breast. Al-Sufi and Ulugh Beg called the star “the lady in the chair”.

Schedar spent most of its 100 to 200 million years as a hot blue-white star. Now it is an orange giant some 43 times the Sun’s width, almost certainly fusing helium in its core and shining about 800 times as brightly as the Sun. Like most giants it turns slowly, about once every 102 days.

Johann Bayer labelled it alpha, yet it and Caph are so evenly matched that which looks brighter depends on the colour of light you measure. Calculations from NASA’s WISE telescope give Schedar the edge as Cassiopeia’s brightest [star](https://astropilot.space/glossary/star).

Schedar (Alpha Cassiopeiae) is 230 light-years away: the light we see from it set off around 1795, 15 years after William Herschel discovered Uranus.

## Did you know?

- **The charioteer’s star.** In China it is Wáng Liáng sì, the Fourth Star of Wang Liang, named after a famous charioteer of the Spring and Autumn period.
- **Overhead in Edinburgh.** Schedar passes straight overhead in cities such as Edinburgh, Copenhagen and Moscow.
- **Brighter than it looks.** Schedar gives out about 18 times as much light as Caph, but it lies much farther away, so the two look almost equal in our sky.

An orange 2nd-magnitude star, the second star of Cassiopeia’s W, next to Caph at the western end. Compare the two: they are nearly equal in brightness, but Schedar is orange and Caph white.

## When and where to see it

It is best placed in the evening sky around November, when it crosses the meridian at about 10 pm local time (around midnight in October). It can be seen from everywhere north of 33°S and never sets north of 33°N.

At its highest it stands 83° up from 50°N, 68° up from 35°N, 33° up from the equator, below the horizon from 35°S.

## Facts

- Type: Star
- Constellation: Cassiopeia
- Designations: Alpha Cassiopeiae, α Cas, 18 Cas, HR 168, HD 3712, HIP 3179
- Magnitude: 2.2
- Position: RA 0h 40.5m, Dec +56° 32′ (J2000)
- Spectral type: K0-IIIa
- Colour: orange (B−V 1.17)
- Distance: 230 light-years
- Discovered: Known since antiquity

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