What is the brightest star in the night sky?

Do you know what is the brightest star in the night sky of Earth? The answer is Sirius, the star so bright that when it comes to brightness, it is second only to the Moon and some planetsLike a flower for example.

Due to its brightness, Sirius was already known to ancient peoples – so much so that its name means “bright” in Greek. This is a star found in the ancient astronomical records of the Greek, Polynesian and other cultures. The Egyptians, for example, called it the Star of the Nile and used it as a reference to create their calendars.

However, astronomers were surprised in 1862 when they discovered that she is not alone: ​​in fact, the star we see in the sky with the naked eye and which we call Sirius is the star Sirius A. Accompanied by Sirius. B, a star about 10,000 times darker than its neighbor, so it is difficult to see from Earth. Only in 2005 were astronomers able to estimate its mass with data from Hubble Space Telescope.

Sirius: The brightest star in the night sky

Sirius is part of the constellation Canis Major and is officially called Alpha Canis Majoris because of its position in the constellation. The magnitude of Sirius A is apparent – 1.46 (the smaller the number, the brighter it is) and it shines 20 times brighter than the Sun.

It is only 8.7 light-years away from us, and it is the seventh The closest star to Earth. Sirius is a type A star – that is, it is hotter than the sun and has a surface temperature of about 9400°C, while the temperature of the Sun is about 5500°C. It has just over two solar masses and emits 26 times more energy than our star.

The brightest star in the universe

Being the brightest star in the Earth’s night sky is not synonymous with being among the brightest stars in the universe. Many of the stars that appear very bright in our sky appear to be very bright because they are closer to the solar system, not because they are actually very bright.

So here is a list of some of the brightest stars we know of in the universe:

R136a1

This is one of the largest and brightest stars we know. The Star R136a1 It is about 10 million times brighter than the Sun and is 150,000 light-years from Earth within the Tarantula Nebula.

When it formed, it had a mass of more than 300 solar masses, but today it is between 170 and 230 times the mass of the Sun.

pistol star

The so-called hexagon star is one of the brightest stars in the world. Milky Way. It emits 10 million times the energy of the Sun and is so large that if placed in the place of our star, it could easily reach the diameter of Earth’s orbit.

The star is about 25,000 light-years from Earth, and its nickname comes from the shape of the nebula that surrounds it. It is not visible to the naked eye because it is hidden by dust around it.

vega

Vega is a very bright star As a result of its proximity and radiance, it has a size of 0.03. It is only 25 light-years away from us and is one of the brightest stars that can be easily seen from the north-central latitudes.

It has a bluish glow, indicating a surface temperature of about 9400 ° C. This star is 2.5 times the diameter of the Sun and has already reached half its lifespan. Thus, Vega is expected to take half a billion years to exhaust its fuel reserves.

Rigel

This is the shining star 120,000 times larger than the Sun. Rigel is located 863 light years from us and can be found in the constellation Orion the Hunter. It is a bluish giant, with a surface temperature of about 11,600 degrees Celsius.

By volume, Rigel is 79 times the diameter of the Sun, and the mass of our star is only 21 times the mass of our star. She is accompanied by stars Rigel B and C.

Deneb

Deneb It is a star so bright that it shines up to 200,000 times brighter than the Sun.

Unlike Vega, Sirius, Alpha Centauri, and other stars that appear to be bright because they are close to each other, Deneb is very far from us. Its exact distance has not yet been determined, but some estimates place it between 1,500 light-years and 3,000 light-years from Earth.