It is faintly visible to the naked eye as an orange-hued point of light with an apparent magnitude of 5.62.

[2] Gaia DR3 parallax measurements imply a distance of 558 light-years[1] and it is slowly receding with a poorly constrained heliocentric radial velocity of approximately 0.2 km/s.

At present, it has exhausted hydrogen at its core and it has expanded to 27.3 times the radius of the Sun.

[7] It radiates 222 times the luminosity of the Sun[8] from its enlarged photosphere at an effective temperature of 4,410 K.[10] Gaia DR3 models it to be a larger and brighter red giant branch star with a radius of 35.27 R☉ and a luminosity of 384 L☉.

[1] 18 Sex is metal deficient with an iron abundance of [Fe/H] = −0.31 or 49% of the Sun's[11] and it spins too slowly for its projected rotational velocity to be measured accurately, having a velocity lower than 1.0 km/s.