Cygnus
What is Cygnus?
Constellations· Summer evenings (N) · Northern Cross on the Milky Way. A swan flying south along the Milky Way. Deneb, its tail, anchors the Summer Triangle; the shape earns it the nickname Northern Cross.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Cygnus is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=con:Cygnus — location and time set automatically, no login.
Stars of the figure
| Star | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| Deneb | 1.3 |
| Sadr | 2.2 |
| Albireo | 3.1 |
The 3 brightest of the 6 stars used in the figure (5 lines). Lower magnitude means brighter.
Deep-sky objects near this constellation
Constellation basics
| Season | summer–early autumn |
|---|---|
| Brightest star | Deneb (1.3) |
| Shape | a cross flying down the Milky Way |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When can I see Cygnus?
- summer–early autumn.
- What is the brightest star in Cygnus?
- Deneb, magnitude 1.3.
- In one line, what is Cygnus?
- Constellations — A swan flying south along the Milky Way.
- Where is Cygnus in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
Albireo is not a true pair — the distances Gaia measured
Albireo's gold and blue stars were long taken for a binary orbiting each other. In 2018 the Gaia satellite measured the parallax and proper motion of each separately, and the numbers diverged: the gold star lies about 430 light-years away and the blue one about 390, some 40 light-years apart and moving in different directions, tipping the verdict toward a chance alignment along our line of sight.
The beauty in a telescope is unchanged. The gold star is a giant with a surface at 4,400 K and the blue one a hot main-sequence star at 13,000 K, so the contrast comes from a real difference in temperature. But if the two do not orbit each other, the pair will slowly separate over tens of thousands of years, and the two jewels in the swan's beak are a coincidence belonging to this era.
The constellation in depth
Cygnus flies south along the summer Milky Way, from Deneb in the tail to Albireo at the beak — a long cross also known as the Northern Cross.
Deneb is brightness's great deceiver: it looks 1.3-magnitude yet lies ~2,600 light-years away — versus Vega's 25 and Altair's 17 — shining ~200,000 Suns strong, among the most luminous supergiants visible.
Albireo splits in a small telescope into gold and sapphire stars side by side — often called the most beautiful double in the sky. Cygnus X-1, the first confirmed black hole, lives here too.
Cygnus is holy ground for planet hunters: the Kepler space telescope stared for nine years at a patch between the Swan and the Lyre, confirming over 2,600 worlds there alone. At the Swan's beak, Albireo splits into amber and sapphire — many observers' favorite double star for a small telescope.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.