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 |
Previously, many people were mistaken in believing that the brightest star was Polaris. However, in terms of its “shining” capabilities, this star is somewhat behind Sirius, and in the city night sky, due to the lighting of lanterns, finding the North Star can be problematic.
Among the brightest celestial bodies, it is impossible not to mention the Sun, which ideally supports life on our planet. It really shines brightly, however, on the scale of the entire Universe it is not too large and bright. If we find the absolute value, then this parameter for the Sun will be equal to 4.75. This means that if the celestial body was located 10 parsecs away, it would hardly be visible to the naked eye. There are other stars that are much larger in size than our heavenly body, and, therefore, shine much brighter.
It is the brightest star that can be observed from Earth. It is perfectly visible from almost all points of our planet, but it can best be observed in the northern hemisphere in winter. People have revered Sirius since ancient times. For example, the Egyptian people used this star to determine when the Nile River would begin to flood and when the sowing season should begin. The Greeks counted down the approach of the hottest days of the year from the appearance of the star. Sirius was considered no less important for sailors who, with its help, navigated the sea. To find Sirius in the night sky, you just need to mentally draw a line between the three stars of Orion's belt. At the same time, one end of the line will rest on Aldebaran, and the other – on Sirius, pleasing the eye with an unusually bright glow.
This star, located in the constellation Canis Major, is a double star. It is located only eight light years from Earth. This star consists of Sirius A (bright and large) and Sirius B (white dwarf), which indicates that the star is a system.
This star, although not as famous as Sirius, is second only to it in brightness. This star is almost impossible to see from the territory of our country (as well as from almost the entire northern hemisphere). However, in the southern hemisphere, Canopus is a kind of guiding star, which is used as an orienting indicator by sailors. In Soviet times, it was the main one for astrocorrection, and Sirius was used as a backup star.
This star, located in the Tarantula Nebula, is impossible to see without special instruments. And all because it is located quite far from Earth - at a distance of 165,000 light years. But, nevertheless, it is the brightest and one of the largest stars that are known today in our Universe. This star is 9,000,000 times brighter than the light of the Sun, and 10,000,000 times larger than it. The star with such an incomprehensible name belongs to the class of blue giants, which are quite rare. Since there are very few such stars, they are of genuine interest to scientists. Most of all, researchers are interested in what it will turn into after its death, and they are simulating various options.
The largest star, which is also considered the brightest. The dimensions of VY Canis Majoris were determined relatively recently. If you place this star in the central part of the solar system, then its edge can block the orbit of Jupiter, just short of the orbit of Saturn. And if you stretch the circumference of a star into a line, then it takes at least 8-5 hours for the light to travel this distance. The diameter of this celestial object exceeds the diameter of the Earth by two thousand times. And, despite the fact that the density of the star is quite low (0.01 g/m3), this object is still considered quite bright.
- 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 from us, 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 the 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!
For the first time, stars began to be distinguished by brightness in the 2nd century BC by the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus. He identified 6 degrees of luminosity and introduced the concept of stellar magnitude. The German astronomer Johann Bayer at the beginning of the 17th century introduced the brightness of stars in the constellations by letters of the alphabet. The brightest luminaries for the human eye were called α of such and such a constellation, β - the next brightest, etc.
The hotter the star, the more light it emits.
Blue stars have the greatest luminosity. Less bright whites. Yellow stars have average luminosity, while red giants are considered the dimmest. The luminosity of a celestial body is a variable quantity. For example, dated July 4, 1054, talks about a star in the constellation Taurus so bright that it was visible even during the day. Over time, it began to fade, and after a year it could no longer be seen with the naked eye.
Now in the constellation Taurus you can observe the Crab Nebula - a trace after the explosion of a supernova. In the center of the nebula, astronomers have discovered a source of powerful radio emission - a pulsar. This is all that remains from a supernova explosion observed in 1054.
The brightest stars in the sky
The brightest stars in the Northern Hemisphere are Deneb from the constellation Cygnus and Rigel from the constellation Orion. They exceed the luminosity of the Sun by 72,500 and 55,000 times, respectively. They are located at a distance of 1600 and 820 light years from Earth. Another Northern star - Betelgeuse - is also located in the constellation Orion. It emits 22,000 times more light than the Sun.
Most of the brightest stars in the Northern Hemisphere can be observed in the constellation Orion.
Sirius, from the constellation Canis Major, is the brightest star visible from Earth. It can be observed in the Southern Hemisphere. Sirius is only 22.5 times brighter than the Sun, but the distance to this star is small by cosmic standards - 8.6 light years. Polaris in the constellation Ursa Minor is as large as 6000 Suns, but it is 780 light years away from us, so it looks dimmer than nearby Sirius.
In the constellation Taurus there is a star with the astronomical name UW SMa. You can only see her. This blue star is distinguished by its gigantic density and small spherical size. It is 860,000 times brighter than the Sun. This unique celestial body is considered the brightest object in the observable part of the Universe.
Sources:
- brightest stars in the northern hemisphere
Residents of Russia can see a bright star in the sky every cloudless night. She is the first to rise into the sky and resists the morning sun the longest, shining. This is the North Star - a guide for sailors and travelers.
Its. Polar
Polaris is a white supergiant star located in the constellation Ursa Minor. This constellation, known to almost everyone since childhood, is located directly above the North Pole. With this arrangement, the location of the North Star in the sky is almost unchanged, so since ancient times it has served as a guide for travelers and sailors.
The polar star is incredibly bright, and it is easy to recognize it, you just have to find the constellation Ursa Minor in the sky and look closely at the handle of the bucket. The very beginning of the constellation is the same Polar Star. It is convenient to navigate by this star because its direction literally coincides with the direction to the north. Such orientation is possible only in the Northern Hemisphere.
The Southern Hemisphere does not have its own polar star.
Legendary star
There are many legends about the North Star. Different peoples of the world will definitely have their own. People have been interested in it for a very long time; the North Star has served as an object of attention and admiration. In the myths of Indians, Arabs, Greeks, Mexicans, there are references to this heavenly body, invariably surrounded by mysteries and greatness.
These legends explain its immobility, because all the stars in the sky move during the night, except this one. In fact, its immobility is explained simply, because it is not the stars around that move, but our Earth as it rotates. From this we can observe the movement of the starry sky, but there is a place in the sky where this does not happen - this is the axis of rotation of the planet, above which the North Star is located.
star system
The North Star, whose pulsating light is so well known, is actually an entire star system consisting of three stars. At the center of this system is the supergiant Polar A, which is 2000 times brighter than our Sun. The system also includes two smaller stars - Polar B, located at some distance, and Polar P, located in close proximity to Polar A, so that it was not possible to see it for quite a long time.
According to research, the age of Polaris and its surrounding stars is about 80 million years.
Presumably these stars and several others located at a distance and not included in the system represent the remnant of an open cluster.
Imagining the starry sky, probably everyone has in their head the thought of thousands of stars of the same type, shining on the boundless dark canvas of our planet. Not at all, in industrial cities, due to pollution, it is difficult to see that the flickering luminaries seriously differ not only in size, distance from the Earth, but also in power. If you want to see this difference, we recommend watching the amazing spectacle in nature, in an open area far from the city. We'll tell you where you need to look to see them, and finally answer the question - " Which star is the brightest in the sky?".
10 brightest stars in the sky
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Each star has its own history, life cycle and stages of formation. They differ in color and strength. For example, some of them are capable of igniting a nuclear fusion reaction. Amazing, isn't it? And one of the most powerful, unusual and brightest is the star Achernar, located 139 light years from our world. We are talking about a blue star whose brightness is 3000 times greater than the sun. Features fast rotation and high temperature. Due to the speed of movement, its equatorial radius is approximately 56% larger than the polar one.
A red star called Betelgeuse shines even brighter and more powerfully. It is the hottest in its class. Experts suggest that this will not last long, because sooner or later the hydrogen will run out and Betelgeuse will switch to helium. It is worth noting that the temperature is not too high, only 3500K, but it shines about 100,000 times brighter than the Sun. It is located approximately 600 light years from Earth. Over the next million years, the star is expected to go supernova, and will likely become its brightest. Perhaps our descendants will be able to see it even during the day.
The next brightest star is the F-class celestial body called Procyon. A rather modest star in its parameters, which today is on the verge of exhausting its hydrogen reserves. In terms of its dimensions, it is only 40% larger than the Sun, however, in terms of evolution, the subgiant shines 7 times more intensely and brightly. Why did Procyon receive such a high place in the ranking, since there are more powerful luminaries? The fact is that it is brighter than the Sun, taking into account 11.5 light years from us. This must be taken into account; if it were closer, we would have to pay more attention to creating lenses in sunglasses.
One of the brightest stars on the planet, the power of which can only be fully appreciated from Orion. An even more distant star, located 860 years from the planet. In this case, the core temperature is 12,000 degrees. It must be said that Rigel is not one of the main sequence stars. However, the blue giant is 120 thousand times brighter than the sun. To give you an idea, if a star were as distant from our planet as Mercury, we would not be able to see anything. However, even in the territory of Orion it blinds.
Speaking of unusual stars, Capella is the undisputed leader. What is so unique about the heavenly body? The fact is that this star consists of two surfaces at once, the temperature of each of which is greater than the sun. At the same time, supergiants are 78 times brighter. They are located 42 light years away. The combination of two stars is quite easy to detect on a clear day, or rather night. However, only knowledgeable people will be able to understand what this miracle in the sky looks like. You probably already understand what names are used to describe many terms in the Russian language, and not only that.
For many people, Vega is associated with an Internet provider, and for film fans, it is the home of aliens (the film “Contact”). In fact, Vega is a bright star located 25 light years from Earth. Its age is 500 million years. Today, astronomers use it as a zero star, that is, zero magnitude. Among all Class A luminaries, it is considered the most powerful. At the same time, it is about 40 times brighter than the sun. In our sky it is the fifth brightest, and in the northern part of the hemisphere it is second in this parameter to only one unique luminary, which will be discussed further.
The only orange star in this rating, on the evolutionary scale located between Capella and Procyon. The brightest star in the northern hemisphere of the planet. If you want to have an idea of its placement, focus on the handle of the Big Dipper bucket. It is always within a given constellation. About 170 times brighter than the sun. As part of its further development, it should become much stronger. It is located approximately 37 light years away.
We are talking about a triple system, each member of which is similar in its parameters to the sun. It's funny, but all the members of the Alpha Centauri system are much dimmer, any of the stars presented in the ranking are the brightest. However, the system is close enough to Earth that its illumination is noticeable even in the city. The distance is 4.4 light years. Well, it's time to talk about the most unique celestial bodies of this top. Surely, many are now aware of the choice of astrologers, who spend their time studying truly intangible objects for years on end.
