Look for it to the east just after sundown, nestled against the stars of Taurus. But the attempt at togetherness is temporary, as once direct motion resumes next year, Jupiter will move quickly away from Saturn, passing into Cancer, while Saturn will linger in Taurus. At a distance of 2.4 million light years, M 31 is the farthest thing that can be seen with the unaided human eye. Its only rival is a smaller spiral galaxy in the nearby constellation Triangulum, M 33, which is 2.2 million light years distant and which can just barely be discerned without a telescope. In the opposite direction, down and to the left of the Square, try to find the dim distorted rectangle that represents the much more obscure constellation, Equuleus, the Little Horse.
Most ancient constellations dominate their parts of the sky.
From the star's distance of 186 light years, we calculate a luminosity 75 times that of the Sun. However, the star deceives. The blend of starlight makes actual temperatures difficult to measure, but should respectively be around 5500 and 8500 Kelvin. The latter was accomplished with the US Navy's Mark III Interferometer, which makes use of the ability of light waves to interfere with each other and that allows extraordinary resolution of detail. To be dying first, the giant must be the more massive, and from orbital calculations consistently weighs in at 2.1 solar masses, whereas the dwarf contains 1.9 solar masses.