Omicron¹ Orionis

A red-orange star in the northwestern parts of Orion, at the northern edge of the bow-shaped formation known as Orion's Shield, and lying directly to the southwest of Aldebaran in Taurus. Omicron¹ Orionis appears faint in the skies of Earth, with a magnitude of +4.7 placing it at the limits of naked eye visibility.

Though it appears faint in the sky, this is in fact an intensely luminous star, but also a distant one at some 561 light years from the Sun. It belongs to the relatively rare S-type classification, being a red giant having converted its hydrogen and now generating elements heavier than helium in its core. Omicron¹ Orionis is also a variable star, whose magnitude pulsates gradually. The period of this pulsation is not consistent, but fluctuates around an averge of some thirty days.