Beta Leporis (Beta Lep, β Leporis, β Lep) is the second brightest star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

 in the constellation

Constellation

In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

 of Lepus

Lepus (constellation)

Lepus is a constellation lying just south of the celestial equator, immediately south of Orion. Its name is Latin for hare. Although the hare does not represent any particular figure in Greek mythology, Lepus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it...

. It is a G-type bright giant

Bright giant

The luminosity class II in the Yerkes spectral classification is given to bright giants. These are stars which straddle the boundary between giants and supergiants, and the classification is in general given to giant stars with exceptionally high luminosity, but which are not sufficiently bright...

 star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

 approximately 159 light-years from the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 and has an apparent visual magnitude of approximately 2.84.

It is also known as Nihal,"quenching their thirst". The occasional spelling Nibal appears to be due to a misreading.

Visual companions

The G-type bright giant has the multiple star designation WDS

Washington Double Star Catalog

The Washington Double Star Catalog, or WDS, is a catalog of double stars, maintained at the United States Naval Observatory. The catalog contains positions, magnitudes, proper motions and spectral types and has entries for 102,387 pairs of double stars. The catalog also includes multiple stars...

 05282-2046A and has a number of visual companions

Double star

In observational astronomy, a double star is a pair of stars that appear close to each other in the sky as seen from Earth when viewed through an optical telescope. This can happen either because the pair forms a binary star, i.e...

, shown below. Component B has been observed to fluctuate in brightness and is also catalogued as NSV 2008.