Key facts
- Category
- Stars
- Object class
- K-type red giant star
- Mass
- ~1.03 solar masses
- Host
- Aldebaran system
- Scale fact
- 62.8 million kmdiameter
- Estimated age
- ~6.4 billion years
- Composition
- Hydrogen and helium
- Temperature
- ~3,900 K surface
Aldebaran
62.8 million kmdiameter
Visual creditscaleofspace.org / CC BY-NC 4.0
Details
Aldebaran is a red giant branch star in Taurus with a cool orange surface and a diameter about 45 times the Sun’s. It lies in front of the Hyades cluster by chance, so it appears to sit among the bull’s-head stars without actually belonging to that group.
Aldebaran is a red-giant-branch star with a diameter about 45 times the Sun’s. Its expanded outer layers have a surface temperature near 3,900 kelvin, producing the orange color seen at the eye of Taurus.
It appears superimposed on the V-shaped Hyades cluster but lies only about 65 light-years away, less than half the cluster’s distance. The familiar grouping is a line-of-sight alignment rather than a physical association.
Links
- Editorial guides
- Universe journey
- Solar neighborhood
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- Aldebaran on Wikipedia
Size neighbors
Objects near Aldebaran on the scale
On the logarithmic size axis, Aldebaran falls between Arcturus and Polaris Aa. The band uses nearby Stars records.
Sources
References for Aldebaran
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- Aldebaran — Wikipedia
- Visual: scaleofspace.org / CC BY-NC 4.0
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.