The star Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky
The brightest star in the sky is undoubtedly Sirius. It shines in the constellation Canis Major and is clearly visible in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter months.
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In the Southern Hemisphere, it is visible during summer, north of the Arctic Circle. The star is located approximately 8.6 light years from the Sun and is one of the closest stars to us. Its brilliance is the result of its true brightness and its proximity to us.
Sirius, one of the easiest objects for amateur astronomy, is very bright, with a magnitude of -1.46. Therefore, astrophotographers can get good photos of it.
At the same time, its brightness makes it a rather difficult subject to photograph - data processing requires good preparation.
However, many astro enthusiasts have managed to tame the scorching Sirius, as you can see in this exquisite photo taken on January 1, 2013.
Invisible satellite
Sirius B is visible to the left of the star
Back in the 19th century, astronomers, when studying Sirius, noticed that its trajectory, although straight, was subject to periodic fluctuations. In the projection of the starry sky, it (the trajectory) looked like a wavy curve.
Moreover, its periodic oscillations could be detected even over a short period of time, which in itself was surprising since we were talking about stars - which are billions of kilometers away from us. Astronomers have suggested that a hidden object that revolves around Sirius with a period of about 50 years is to blame for such “wiggles”.
18 years after the bold assumption, a small star was discovered near Sirius, which has a magnitude of 8.4 and is the first discovered white dwarf, and also the most massive, discovered to date.
List of the brightest stars
| № | Name | Distance, St. years | Apparent value | Absolute value | Spectral class | Celestial hemisphere |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0,0000158 | −26,72 | 4,8 | G2V | ||
| 1 | 8,6 | −1,46 | 1,4 | A1Vm | South | |
| 2 | 310 | −0,72 | −5,53 | A9II | South | |
| 3 | 4,3 | −0,27 | 4,06 | G2V+K1V | South | |
| 4 | 34 | −0,04 | −0,3 | K1.5IIIp | Northern | |
| 5 | 25 | 0.03 (variable) | 0,6 | A0Va | Northern | |
| 6 | 41 | 0,08 | −0,5 | G6III + G2III | Northern | |
| 7 | ~870 | 0.12 (variable) | −7 | B8Iae | South | |
| 8 | 11,4 | 0,38 | 2,6 | F5IV-V | Northern | |
| 9 | 69 | 0,46 | −1,3 | B3Vnp | South | |
| 10 | ~530 | 0.50 (variable) | −5,14 | M2Iab | Northern | |
| 11 | ~400 | 0.61 (variable) | −4,4 | B1III | South | |
| 12 | 16 | 0,77 | 2,3 | A7Vn | Northern | |
| 13 | ~330 | 0,79 | −4,6 | B0.5Iv + B1Vn | South | |
| 14 | 60 | 0.85 (variable) | −0,3 | K5III | Northern | |
| 15 | ~610 | 0.96 (variable) | −5,2 | M1.5Iab | South | |
| 16 | 250 | 0.98 (variable) | −3,2 | B1V | South | |
| 17 |
- Translation
Do you know them all, as well as the reasons for their brightness?
I'm hungry for new knowledge. The point is to learn every day and become brighter and brighter. This is the essence of this world.
- Jay-Z
When you imagine the night sky, you most likely think of thousands of stars twinkling against the black blanket of night, something that can only be truly seen away from cities and other sources of light pollution.
But those of us who don't get to witness such a spectacle on a periodic basis are missing the fact that stars seen from urban areas with high light pollution look different than when viewed in dark conditions. Their color and relative brightness immediately set them apart from their neighboring stars, and each has its own story.
People in the northern hemisphere can probably immediately recognize Ursa Major or the letter W in Cassiopeia, while in the southern hemisphere the most famous constellation has to be the Southern Cross. But these stars are not among the ten brightest!
Milky Way next to the Southern Cross
Each star has its own life cycle, to which it is tied from the moment of birth. When any star forms, the dominant element will be hydrogen - the most abundant element in the Universe - and its fate is determined only by its mass. Stars with 8% the mass of the Sun can ignite nuclear fusion reactions in their cores, fusing helium from hydrogen, and their energy gradually moves from the inside out and pours out into the Universe. Low-mass stars are red (due to low temperatures), dim, and burn their fuel slowly—the longest-lived ones are destined to burn for trillions of years.
But the more mass a star gains, the hotter its core, and the larger the region in which nuclear fusion occurs. By the time it reaches solar mass, the star falls into class G, and its lifetime does not exceed ten billion years. Double the solar mass and you get a class A star that is bright blue and lives for less than two billion years. And the most massive stars, classes O and B, live only a few million years, after which their core runs out of hydrogen fuel. Not surprisingly, the most massive and hot stars are also the brightest. A typical class A star can be 20 times brighter than the Sun, and the most massive ones can be tens of thousands of times brighter!
But no matter how a star begins life, the hydrogen fuel in its core runs out.
And from that moment on, the star begins to burn heavier elements, expanding into a giant star, cooler, but also brighter than the original one. The giant phase is shorter than the hydrogen burning phase, but its incredible brightness makes it visible from much greater distances than the original star was visible from.
Taking all this into account, let's move on to the ten brightest stars in our sky, in increasing order of brightness.
10. Achernar. A bright blue star with seven times the mass of the Sun and 3,000 times the brightness. This is one of the fastest rotating stars known to us! It rotates so fast that its equatorial radius is 56% greater than its polar radius, and the temperature at the pole - because it is much closer to the core - is 10,000 K higher. But it is quite far from us, 139 light years away.
9. Betelgeuse. A red giant star in the Orion constellation, Betelgeuse was a bright and hot O-class star until it ran out of hydrogen and switched to helium. Despite its low temperature of 3,500 K, it is more than 100,000 times brighter than the Sun, which is why it is among the ten brightest, despite being 600 light years away. Over the next million years, Betelgeuse will go supernova and temporarily become the brightest star in the sky, possibly visible during the day.
8. Procyon. The star is very different from those we have considered. Procyon is a modest F-class star, just 40% larger than the Sun, and on the verge of running out of hydrogen in its core - meaning it is a subgiant in the process of evolution. It is about 7 times brighter than the Sun, but is only 11.5 light years away, so it may be brighter than all but seven stars in our sky.
7. Rigel. In Orion, Betelgeuse is not the brightest of the stars - this distinction is awarded to Rigel, a star even more distant from us. It is 860 light years away, and with a temperature of just 12,000 degrees, Rigel is not a main sequence star - it is a rare blue supergiant! It is 120,000 times brighter than the Sun, and shines so brightly not because of its distance from us, but because of its own brightness.
6. Chapel. This is a strange star because it is actually two red giants with temperatures comparable to the Sun, but each is about 78 times brighter than the Sun. At a distance of 42 light years, it is the combination of its own brightness, relatively short distance and the fact that there are two of them that allows Capella to be on our list.
5. Vega. The brightest star from the Summer-Autumn Triangle, the home of the aliens from the film “Contact”. Astronomers used it as a standard "zero magnitude" star. It is located only 25 light years away, belongs to the stars of the main sequence, and is one of the brightest class A stars known to us, and is also quite young, only 400-500 million years old. Moreover, it is 40 times brighter than the Sun, and the fifth brightest star in the sky. And of all the stars in the northern hemisphere, Vega is second only to one star...
4. Arcturus. The orange giant, on the evolutionary scale, is somewhere between Procyon and Capella. It is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere and can be easily found by the "handle" of the Big Dipper. It is 170 times brighter than the Sun, and following its evolutionary path, it can become even brighter! It is only 37 light years away, and only three stars are brighter than it, all located in the southern hemisphere.
3. Alpha Centauri. This is a triple system in which the main member is very similar to the Sun, and is itself fainter than any star in the ten. But the Alpha Centauri system consists of the stars closest to us, so its location affects its apparent brightness - after all, it is only 4.4 light years away. Not at all like number 2 on the list.
2. Canopus. A white supergiant, Canopus is 15,000 times brighter than the Sun, and is the second brightest star in the night sky, despite being 310 light-years away. It is ten times more massive than the Sun and 71 times larger - it is not surprising that it shines so brightly, but it could not reach the first place. After all, the brightest star in the sky is...
1. Sirius. It is twice as bright as Canopus, and northern hemisphere observers can often see it rising behind the constellation Orion in winter. It flickers frequently because its bright light can penetrate the lower atmosphere better than that of other stars. It's only 8.6 light-years away, but it's a class A star, twice as massive and 25 times brighter than the Sun.
It may surprise you that the top stars on the list are not the brightest or the closest stars, but rather combinations of bright enough and close enough to shine brightest. Stars located twice as far away have four times less brightness, so Sirius shines brighter than Canopus, which shines brighter than Alpha Centauri, etc. Interestingly, class M dwarf stars, to which three out of every four stars in the Universe belong, are not on this list at all.
What we can take away from this lesson: sometimes the things that seem most striking and most obvious to us turn out to be the most unusual. Common things can be much harder to find, but that means we need to improve our observation methods!
Many people in November wonder: what bright star is visible in the east in the morning? She really very bright: other stars pale in comparison with her. It is still easily distinguishable even when here, in the southeast, dawn is already in full swing, washing away other stars from the sky. And then almost until sunrise this star remains completely alone.
I want to congratulate you - you are observing the planet Venus, the brightest luminary in our sky after the Sun and Moon!
Venus is only visible in the morning or evening sky- you will never see her late at night in the south. Her time is the predawn or twilight evening hours, when she literally reigns in the sky.
Check yourself if you are really observing Venus.
- In November and December 2018 Venus is visible in the east in the morning, rising 4 hours before sunrise. It is visible for two hours in the dark sky, and for another hour against the background of the morning dawn.
- Venus color white, near the horizon may be slightly yellowish.
- Venus does not flicker that is, it does not blink, does not tremble, but shines powerfully, evenly and calmly.
- Venus is so bright that it no longer looks like a star, but like the spotlight of an airplane flying towards it. It has long been noted that the bright white light of the planet is capable of cast clear shadows on the snow; The easiest way to check this is outside the city on a moonless night, where the light of Venus is not interfered with by street lights. By the way, according to Russian astronomers, about 30% of reports of UFOs in our country occur on rising or setting Venus.
Venus against the background of the morning dawn is still bright and noticeable, although at this time the stars are practically no longer visible. Pattern: stellarium
In November 2018 - slightly to the right of the planet. Please note: Spica is one of the twenty brightest stars in the entire sky, but next to Venus it simply fades! Another bright star, Arcturus, is located above and to the left of Spica. Arcturus has a characteristic reddish color. So, Venus is much brighter than Arcturus and even more so Spica!
Watch these luminaries for a few minutes and compare them appearance with Venus. Notice how much brighter stars twinkle than Venus. Spica can even shimmer in different colors! Also try to remember the brightness of Venus in comparison with the brightest stars - and you will never confuse it with anything else.
Few things can compare in beauty to Venus in the sky! The planet looks especially beautiful against the background of the flaring dawn. Beautiful celestial pictures are obtained when the crescent Moon is near Venus. The next such meeting will take place on the morning of December 3 and 4, 2018. Don't miss it!
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- Translation
Do you know them all, as well as the reasons for their brightness?
I'm hungry for new knowledge. The point is to learn every day and become brighter and brighter. This is the essence of this world.
- Jay-Z
When you imagine the night sky, you most likely think of thousands of stars twinkling against the black blanket of night, something that can only be truly seen away from cities and other sources of light pollution.
But those of us who don't get to witness such a spectacle on a periodic basis are missing the fact that stars seen from urban areas with high light pollution look different than when viewed in dark conditions. Their color and relative brightness immediately set them apart from their neighboring stars, and each has its own story.
People in the northern hemisphere can probably immediately recognize Ursa Major or the letter W in Cassiopeia, while in the southern hemisphere the most famous constellation has to be the Southern Cross. But these stars are not among the ten brightest!
Milky Way next to the Southern Cross
Each star has its own life cycle, to which it is tied from the moment of birth. When any star forms, the dominant element will be hydrogen - the most abundant element in the Universe - and its fate is determined only by its mass. Stars with 8% the mass of the Sun can ignite nuclear fusion reactions in their cores, fusing helium from hydrogen, and their energy gradually moves from the inside out and pours out into the Universe. Low-mass stars are red (due to low temperatures), dim, and burn their fuel slowly—the longest-lived ones are destined to burn for trillions of years.
But the more mass a star gains, the hotter its core, and the larger the region in which nuclear fusion occurs. By the time it reaches solar mass, the star falls into class G, and its lifetime does not exceed ten billion years. Double the solar mass and you get a class A star that is bright blue and lives for less than two billion years. And the most massive stars, classes O and B, live only a few million years, after which their core runs out of hydrogen fuel. Not surprisingly, the most massive and hot stars are also the brightest. A typical class A star can be 20 times brighter than the Sun, and the most massive ones can be tens of thousands of times brighter!
But no matter how a star begins life, the hydrogen fuel in its core runs out.
And from that moment on, the star begins to burn heavier elements, expanding into a giant star, cooler, but also brighter than the original one. The giant phase is shorter than the hydrogen burning phase, but its incredible brightness makes it visible from much greater distances than the original star was visible from.
Taking all this into account, let's move on to the ten brightest stars in our sky, in increasing order of brightness.
10. Achernar. A bright blue star with seven times the mass of the Sun and 3,000 times the brightness. This is one of the fastest rotating stars known to us! It rotates so fast that its equatorial radius is 56% greater than its polar radius, and the temperature at the pole - because it is much closer to the core - is 10,000 K higher. But it is quite far from us, 139 light years away.
9. Betelgeuse. A red giant star in the Orion constellation, Betelgeuse was a bright and hot O-class star until it ran out of hydrogen and switched to helium. Despite its low temperature of 3,500 K, it is more than 100,000 times brighter than the Sun, which is why it is among the ten brightest, despite being 600 light years away. Over the next million years, Betelgeuse will go supernova and temporarily become the brightest star in the sky, possibly visible during the day.
8. Procyon. The star is very different from those we have considered. Procyon is a modest F-class star, just 40% larger than the Sun, and on the verge of running out of hydrogen in its core - meaning it is a subgiant in the process of evolution. It is about 7 times brighter than the Sun, but is only 11.5 light years away, so it may be brighter than all but seven stars in our sky.
7. Rigel. In Orion, Betelgeuse is not the brightest of the stars - this distinction is awarded to Rigel, a star even more distant from us. It is 860 light years away, and with a temperature of just 12,000 degrees, Rigel is not a main sequence star - it is a rare blue supergiant! It is 120,000 times brighter than the Sun, and shines so brightly not because of its distance from us, but because of its own brightness.
6. Chapel. This is a strange star because it is actually two red giants with temperatures comparable to the Sun, but each is about 78 times brighter than the Sun. At a distance of 42 light years, it is the combination of its own brightness, relatively short distance and the fact that there are two of them that allows Capella to be on our list.
5. Vega. The brightest star from the Summer-Autumn Triangle, the home of the aliens from the film “Contact”. Astronomers used it as a standard "zero magnitude" star. It is located only 25 light years away, belongs to the stars of the main sequence, and is one of the brightest class A stars known to us, and is also quite young, only 400-500 million years old. Moreover, it is 40 times brighter than the Sun, and the fifth brightest star in the sky. And of all the stars in the northern hemisphere, Vega is second only to one star...
4. Arcturus. The orange giant, on the evolutionary scale, is somewhere between Procyon and Capella. It is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere and can be easily found by the "handle" of the Big Dipper. It is 170 times brighter than the Sun, and following its evolutionary path, it can become even brighter! It is only 37 light years away, and only three stars are brighter than it, all located in the southern hemisphere.
3. Alpha Centauri. This is a triple system in which the main member is very similar to the Sun, and is itself fainter than any star in the ten. But the Alpha Centauri system consists of the stars closest to us, so its location affects its apparent brightness - after all, it is only 4.4 light years away. Not at all like number 2 on the list.
2. Canopus. A white supergiant, Canopus is 15,000 times brighter than the Sun, and is the second brightest star in the night sky, despite being 310 light-years away. It is ten times more massive than the Sun and 71 times larger - it is not surprising that it shines so brightly, but it could not reach the first place. After all, the brightest star in the sky is...
1. Sirius. It is twice as bright as Canopus, and northern hemisphere observers can often see it rising behind the constellation Orion in winter. It flickers frequently because its bright light can penetrate the lower atmosphere better than that of other stars. It's only 8.6 light-years away, but it's a class A star, twice as massive and 25 times brighter than the Sun.
It may surprise you that the top stars on the list are not the brightest or the closest stars, but rather combinations of bright enough and close enough to shine brightest. Stars located twice as far away have four times less brightness, so Sirius shines brighter than Canopus, which shines brighter than Alpha Centauri, etc. Interestingly, class M dwarf stars, to which three out of every four stars in the Universe belong, are not on this list at all.
What we can take away from this lesson: sometimes the things that seem most striking and most obvious to us turn out to be the most unusual. Common things can be much harder to find, but that means we need to improve our observation methods!
