The molecular and crystal structure of 2-methylpyridine or 2-picoline (1), melting point 206K, was obtained from single crystal X-ray diffraction data by low-temperature crystallization of the liquid in a thin capillary on the diffractometer SMART 1000 CCD in a cold N2 gas stream. The molecule has almost Cs symmetry with all atoms in a plane except two hydrogen atoms of the CH3 group. Molecular geometry parameters obtained from the X-ray data and corrected for libration effect are in good agreement with those obtained from our ab initio calculations. Interesting peculiarity of the crystal packing of (1) is the C–H⋯π intermolecular contact with short H⋯X distance 2.64Å, which can bring about the packing motif of (1) (X is the center of the aromatic ring, C is a carbon atom of the ring).