This system has an apparent visual magnitude of +3.0,[2] making it one of the brighter stars in the constellation and hence readily visible to the naked eye.

Later Arabian astronomers attempted to identify the name with particular stars, principally in the modern constellations Centaurus and Colomba.

[20] It is a single-lined spectroscopic binary system, which means that the pair have not been individually resolved with a telescope, but the gravitational perturbations of an unseen astrometric companion can be discerned by shifts in the spectrum of the primary caused by the Doppler effect.

It has a stellar classification of B2.5 V,[3] which means it is a B-type main sequence star that is generating energy through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen at its core.

[4] This energy is being radiated from its outer envelope at an effective temperature of about 18,700 K,[11] giving it the blue-white hue of a B-type star.