It is an M-type red giant with an apparent magnitude of +6.38, making it very faintly visible to the naked eye under the best observing conditions.

Lambda Ursae Minoris is an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star, a star that has exhausted its core hydrogen and helium and is now fusing material in shells outside its core.

[8] AGB stars are often unstable and tend to pulsate, and Lambda Ursae Minoris is classified as a semiregular variable star and its brightness varies by about 0.1 magnitudes.

[9] This star was used from 1882 as a reference to measure the magnitudes of stars in the northern hemisphere for the 1908 Revised Harvard Photometry catalogue.

It was then noted that "Neither of these stars appears to vary perceptibly" but that, due to the procedures used "if they did, the variation would have no effect on the final measures.