When Orion is near the meridian, Mintaka is the rightmost of the Belt's stars when viewed from the Northern Hemisphere facing south.

[26] The outer star of the triple system orbits the inner pair once every 53,839 days (147.40 yr).

It has a strong magnetic field and a very slow rotational velocity that produces chemical stratification in its atmosphere, which leads to the unusual abundances seen in the spectrum.

[7] In Gaia Data Release 3, component C is listed with a parallax of 3.4531±0.0371 mas,[12] consistent with the distances derived by other methods but disagreeing with the Hipparcos-derived value for the primary.

[1] The Gaia DR3 parallax for component B is 3.5002″±0.0119″, strongly suggesting it is considerably closer than the other members of the system and merely a chance alignment.

[citation needed] In Chinese, 參宿 (Shēn Sù), meaning Three Stars (asterism), refers to an asterism consisting of Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak (Orion's Belt), with Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Saiph and Rigel later added.

The USS Mintaka (AK-94) was a United States Navy Crater-class cargo ship named after the star.