The brightest star after the sun. The brightest stars in the southern hemisphere

• Translation

Do you know all of them, as well as the reasons for their brightness?

I am hungry for new knowledge. The point is to learn every day, and become brighter and brighter. That is the essence of this world.
- Jay Z

But those of us who can't watch such a spectacle on a periodic basis are overlooking the fact that stars seen from urban areas with high light pollution look different than they do when viewed in dark conditions. Their color and relative brightness immediately separate them from their neighboring stars, and each of them has its own story.

Residents of the northern hemisphere can probably immediately recognize the Big Dipper 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 near the Southern Cross

Each star has its own life cycle, to which it is tied from the moment of birth. In the formation of any star, the dominant element will be hydrogen - the most abundant element in the universe - and its fate is determined only by its mass. Stars with a mass of 8% of the mass of the sun can ignite a nuclear fusion reaction in the core, 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 stars are destined to burn for trillions of years.

But the more a star gains mass, the hotter its core, and the larger the region in which nuclear fusion takes place. By the time it reaches the solar mass, the star falls into class G, and its lifetime does not exceed ten billion years. Double the solar mass and you have an A star, bright blue, and less than two billion years old. And the most massive stars, classes O and B, live only a few million years, after which they run out of hydrogen fuel in the core. Not surprisingly, the most massive and hottest stars are also the brightest. A typical class A star can be 20 times brighter than the Sun, and the most massive - tens of thousands of times!

But no matter how a star begins life, the hydrogen fuel in its core ends.

And from that moment on, the star begins to burn heavier elements, expanding into a giant star, colder, 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 far greater distances than the original star was visible from.

Considering all this, let's move on to the ten brightest stars in our sky, in order of increasing brightness.

10. Achernar. A bright blue star, seven times the mass of the Sun and 3,000 times as bright. This is one of the fastest rotating stars known to us! It rotates so fast that its equatorial radius is 56% larger than the polar one, and the temperature at the pole - since it is much closer to the core - is 10,000 K more. But it is quite far from us, at 139 light years.

9. Betelgeuse. A red giant from the constellation of Orion, Betelgeuse was a bright and hot class O star until it ran out of hydrogen and switched to helium. Despite its low temperature of 3500 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. In 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 the ones we have considered. Procyon is a modest F-class star, only 40% larger than the Sun, and is on the verge of running out of hydrogen in its core - that is, 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 can be brighter than almost all but seven of the 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 at 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, in fact, these are two red giants with a temperature comparable to the sun, but each of them is about 78 times brighter than the Sun. At 42 light-years away, it's the combination of its own brightness, its relatively small 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 aliens from the movie "Contact". Astronomers used it as a standard "zero magnitude" star. It is only 25 light-years away, belongs to the main sequence stars, and is one of the brightest class A stars known to us, as well as quite young, only 400-500 million years old. At the same time, 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. This is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere, and it is easy to find it by the "handle" of the Big Dipper bucket. It is 170 times brighter than the Sun, and following the 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 itself is dimmer than any of the ten stars. 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 #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. The brightest star in the sky is...

1 Sirius. It is twice as bright as Canopus, and observers from the northern hemisphere can often see it in winter, rising behind the constellation Orion. It often twinkles because its bright light can penetrate the lower atmosphere better than the light of other stars. It is only 8.6 light-years away, but it is a Class A star, twice as massive and 25 times as luminous as the Sun.

It may surprise you that the first on the list are not the brightest or closest stars, but rather combinations of enough brightness and close enough distance to shine the brightest. Stars twice as far away have four times less brightness, so Sirius shines brighter than Canopus, which shines brighter than Alpha Centauri, and so on. 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 can be learned from this lesson: sometimes the things that seem most prominent and most obvious to us turn out to be the most unusual. Common things can be much more difficult to find, but this means that we should improve our methods of observation!

The night sky is striking in its beauty and countless celestial fireflies. What is especially fascinating is that their arrangement is structured, as if they were specially arranged in the right order, forming star systems. From ancient times, learned astrologers tried to calculate all these myriad heavenly bodies and give them names. Today, a huge number of stars have been discovered in the sky, but this is just a small part of all the existing vast Universe. Consider what constellations and luminaries are.

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Stars and their classification

A star is a celestial body that radiates a huge amount of light and heat.

It consists mainly of helium (lat. Helium), as well as (lat. Hydrogenium).

The celestial body is in a state of equilibrium due to the pressure inside the body itself and its own.

Heat and light radiates as a result of thermonuclear reactions, occurring inside the body.

What are the types depending on life cycle and structure:

• main sequence. This is the main life cycle of the luminary. This is exactly what it is, as well as the vast majority of others.
• Brown dwarf. A relatively small, dim object with a low temperature. The first one was opened in 1995.
• White dwarf. At the end of its life cycle, the ball begins to shrink until its density balances gravity. Then it turns off and cools down.
• Red giant. A huge body that emits a large amount of light, but not very hot (up to 5000 K).
• New. New stars do not light up, just old ones flare up with renewed vigor.
• Supernova. This is the same new one with the release of a large amount of light.
• Hypernova. This is a supernova, but much larger.
• Bright Blue Variables (LBV). The biggest and also the hottest.
• Ultra X-ray sources (ULX). They give off a lot of radiation.
• Neutron. It is characterized by fast rotation, as well as a strong magnetic field.
• Unique. Double, with different sizes.

Types dependently from the spectrum:

• Blue.
• White-blue.
• White.
• Yellow white.
• Yellow.
• Orange.
• Red.

Important! Most of the stars in the sky are entire systems. What we see as one can actually be two, three, five, and even hundreds of bodies of one system.

Names of stars and constellations

At all times the stars fascinated. They became the object of study, both from the mystical side (astrology, alchemy), and from the scientific side (astronomy). People searched for them, calculated, counted, put them into constellations, and also give them names. Constellations are clusters of celestial bodies arranged in a certain sequence.

In the sky under certain conditions from different points you can see up to 6 thousand stars. They have their scientific names, but about three hundred of them also have personal names that they have received since ancient times. The stars mostly have Arabic names.

The fact is that when astronomy was actively developing everywhere, the Western world was going through "dark ages", so its development lagged far behind. Mesopotamia was the most successful here, and China was the least successful.

The Arabs not only discovered new ones, but they also renamed the heavenly bodies, who already had a Latin or Greek name. They entered history with Arabic names. The constellations, for the most part, had Latin names.

The brightness depends on the emitted light, size and distance from us. The brightest star is the Sun. It is not the largest, not the brightest, but closest to us.

The most beautiful luminaries with the highest brightness. The first among them:

1. Sirius (Alpha Canis Major);
2. Canopus (Alpha Carina);
3. Toliman (Alpha Centauri);
4. Arcturus (Alpha Bootes);
5. Vega (Alpha Lyra).

Naming periods

It is conditionally possible to distinguish several periods in which people gave names to heavenly bodies.

pre-antique period

Since ancient times, people have tried to "understand" the sky, and gave names to the night luminaries. No more than 20 names from those times have come down to us. The scientists of Babylon, Egypt, Israel, Assyria and Mesopotamia actively worked here.

Greek period

The Greeks did not particularly delve into astronomy. They gave names only to a small number of luminaries. Mostly, they took names from the names of the constellations or simply attributed existing names. All the astronomical knowledge of ancient Greece, as well as Babylon, was collected Greek scientist Ptolemy Claudius(I-II c.) in the works "Almagest" and "Tetrabiblos".

Almagest (Great Building) - the work of Ptolemy in thirteen books, where he, on the basis of the work of Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 140 BC), tries to explain the structure of the universe. He also lists the names of some of the brightest constellations.

Table of celestial bodies described in the Almagest

The Tetrabiblos is another work by Ptolemy Claudius in four books. The list of celestial bodies is supplemented here.

Roman period

The Roman Empire was engaged in the study of astronomy, but when this science began to develop actively, Rome fell. And behind the state, his science fell into decay. However, about a hundred stars have Latin names, although this does not guarantee that they were given names their scholars from Rome.

Arabic period

Fundamental in the study of astronomy among the Arabs was the work of Ptolemy Almagest. Most of them have been translated into Arabic. Based on the religious beliefs of the Arabs, they replaced the names of parts of the luminaries. Names were often given based on the location of the body in the constellation. So, many of them have names or parts of names meaning neck, leg or tail.

Table of Arabic names

Renaissance

Since the 16th century in Europe, antiquity has been reborn, and with it science. Arabic names did not change, but Arabic-Latin hybrids often appeared.

New clusters of celestial bodies were practically not discovered, but the old ones were supplemented by new objects. A significant event of that time was the release of the atlas of the starry sky "Uranometriya".

Its compiler was the amateur astronomer Johann Bayer (1603). On the atlas, he applied an artistic image of the constellations.

Most importantly, he suggested luminary naming principle with the addition of letters of the Greek alphabet. The brightest body of the constellation will be called Alpha, the less bright Beta, and so on until Omega. For example, the brightest star in Scorpio is Alpha Scorpii, the less bright Beta Scorpii, then Gamma Scorpii, and so on.

Nowadays

With the advent of powerful ones, a huge number of luminaries began to be discovered. Now they are not given beautiful names, but simply assigned an index with a numeric and alphabetic code. But it happens that celestial bodies are given nominal names. They are called by their names scientific discoverers, and now you can even buy the opportunity to name the luminary at will.

Important! The sun is not part of any constellation.

What are the constellations

Initially, the figures were figures formed by bright luminaries. Now scientists use them as landmarks of the celestial sphere.

The most famous constellations alphabetically:

1. Andromeda. It is located in the northern hemisphere of the celestial sphere.
2. Twins. The luminaries with the greatest brightness are Pollux and Castor. Zodiac sign.
3. Big Dipper. Seven stars forming the image of a ladle.
4. Big Dog. It has the brightest star in the sky - Sirius.
5. Scales. Zodiac, consisting of 83 objects.
6. Aquarius. Zodiacal, with an asterism forming a jug.
7. Auriga. Its most outstanding object is the Chapel.
8. Wolf. Located in the southern hemisphere.
9. Bootes. The brightest luminary is Arcturus.
10. Veronica's hair. Consists of 64 visible objects.
11. Crow. It is best seen in mid-latitudes.
12. Hercules. Has 235 visible objects.
13. Hydra. The most important luminary is Alphard.
14. Pigeon. 71 bodies of the southern hemisphere.
15. Hounds Dogs. 57 visible objects.
16. Virgo. Zodiac, with the brightest body - Spica.
17. Dolphin. It can be seen everywhere except Antarctica.
18. The Dragon. Northern hemisphere, practically a pole.
19. Unicorn. Located on the Milky Way.
20. Altar. 60 visible stars.
21. Painter. It has 49 objects.
22. Giraffe. Faintly visible in the northern hemisphere.
23. Crane. The brightest is Alnair.
24. Hare. 72 celestial bodies.
25. Ophiuchus. 13th sign of the zodiac, but not included in this list.
26. Snake. 106 luminaries.
27. Golden Fish. 32 objects visible to the naked eye.
28. Indian. Faintly visible constellation.
29. Cassiopeia. The shape is similar to the letter "W".
30. Keel. 206 objects.
31. Whale. Located in the "water" zone of the sky.
32. Capricorn. Zodiacal, southern hemisphere.
33. Compass. 43 visible luminaries.
34. Stern. Located on the Milky Way.
35. Swan. Located in the northern part.
36. A lion. Zodiac, northern part.
37. Flying fish. 31 objects.
38. Lyra. The brightest light is Vega.
39. Chanterelle. Dim.
40. Ursa Minor. Located above the North Pole. She has the North Star.
41. Small Horse. 14 luminaries.
42. Small Dog. Bright constellation.
43. Microscope. Southern part.
44. Fly. At the equator.
45. Pump. Southern sky.
46. Square. Passes through the Milky Way.
47. Aries. Zodiacal, having the bodies of Mezarthim, Hamal and Sheratan.
48. Octant. At the south pole.
49. Eagle. At the equator.
50. Orion. It has a bright object - Rigel.
51. Peacock. Southern Hemisphere.
52. Sail. 195 luminaries of the southern hemisphere.
53. Pegasus. south of Andromeda. Its brightest stars are Markab and Enif.
54. Perseus. Discovered by Ptolemy. The first object is Mirfak.
55. Bake. Virtually invisible.
56. Bird of paradise. Located near the south pole.
57. Crayfish. Zodiacal, hardly visible.
58. Cutter. Southern part.
59. Fish. A large constellation divided into two parts.
60. Lynx. 92 visible luminaries.
61. Northern Crown. Crown shape.
62. Sextant. At the equator.
63. Grid. Consists of 22 objects.
64. Scorpion. The first luminary is Antares.
65. Sculptor. 55 celestial bodies.
66. Sagittarius. Zodiacal.
67. Taurus. Zodiacal. Aldebaran is the brightest object.
68. Triangle. 25 stars.
69. Toucan. This is where the Small Magellanic Cloud is located.
70. Phoenix. 63 luminaries.
71. Chameleon. Small and dim.
72. Centaurus. Its brightest star for us, Proxima Centauri, is the closest to the Sun.
73. Cepheus. Has the shape of a triangle.
74. Compass. Near Alpha Centauri.
75. Watch. It has an elongated shape.
76. Shield. Near the equator.
77. Eridanus. Big constellation.
78. Southern Hydra. 32 celestial bodies.
79. South Crown. Weakly visible.
80. Southern Fish. 43 objects.
81. South Cross. In the form of a cross.
82. Southern Triangle. Has the shape of a triangle.
83. Lizard. No bright objects.

What are the constellations of the zodiac

The signs of the zodiac are the constellations through which Earth travels throughout the year, forming a conditional ring around the system. Interestingly, 12 signs of the zodiac are accepted, although Ophiuchus, which is not considered a zodiac, is also located on this ring.

Attention! Constellations don't exist.

By and large, there are no figures at all made up of celestial bodies.

After all, we, looking at the sky, perceive it as plane in two dimensions, but the luminaries are located not on a plane, but in space, at a great distance from each other.

They do not form any pattern.

Let's say the light from Proxima Centauri closest to the Sun reaches us in almost 4.3 years.

And from another object of the same star system, Omega Centauri reaches the earth in 16 thousand years. All divisions are rather conditional.

Constellations and stars - sky map, interesting facts

Names of stars and constellations

Conclusion

It is impossible to calculate the reliable number of heavenly bodies in the Universe. You can't even get close to the exact number. Stars coalesce into galaxies. Only our Milky Way galaxy has about 100,000,000,000. From the Earth with the help of the most powerful telescopes about 55,000,000,000 galaxies can be detected. With the advent of the Hubble telescope, which is in Earth orbit, scientists have discovered about 125,000,000,000 galaxies, and each has billions, hundreds of billions of objects. It is only clear that there are at least a trillion trillion luminaries in the Universe, but this is only a small part of what is real.

The science

The night sky is full objects of incredible beauty which can be seen even with the naked eye. If you do not have special equipment to look at the sky - it does not matter, some amazing things can be seen without it.

Spectacular comets, bright planets, distant nebulae, twinkling stars and constellations can all be found in the night sky.

The only important thing to remember about light pollution in big cities. In the city, the light from the lanterns and windows of buildings is so strong that all the most interesting things in the night sky turns out to be hidden, therefore, to see these amazing things, you should go out of town.

light pollution

brightest planet

Very hot neighbor of the Earth - Venus can rightfully be proud of the title the brightest planet in the sky. The brightness of the planet is due to highly reflective clouds, as well as the fact that it is close to the Earth. Venus approximately 6 times brighter than other neighbors of the Earth - Mars and Jupiter.

Venus is brighter than any other object in the night sky, with the exception of the Moon, of course. Its maximum visible value is around 5. For comparison: the apparent magnitude of the full moon is -13 , that is, it is approximately 1600 times brighter than Venus.

In February 2012, a unique conjunction of three of the brightest objects in the night sky was observed: Venus, Jupiter and Moon which could be seen just after sunset.

The largest star

The largest star known to science - VY Canis Major, a type M red hypergiant, which is located at a distance of approximately 3800 light years from Earth in the constellation Canis Major.

Scientists have estimated that VY Canis Majoris could be more than 2100 times the size of the Sun. If it is placed in the solar system, then the edges of this monster will be located approximately in the orbit of Saturn.

The surface of a hypergiant can hardly be called noticeably outlined, since this star is approximately 1000 times less dense than our planet's atmosphere at sea level.

VY Canis Major is the source a lot of controversy in the scientific world, since the assessment of its size goes beyond the boundaries of the current stellar theory. Astronomers believe that the star VY Canis Majoris during the next 100 thousand years explode and die, turning into a "hypernova" and releasing an enormous amount of energy, and this energy will be more than any other supernova.

brightest star

In 1997, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found that the brightest known star is a star at a distance 25 thousand light years from us. This star highlights 10 million times more energy than the sun. In size, this star is also much larger than our star. If you place it in the center of the solar system, it will take the orbit of the Earth.

Scientists have suggested that this large star, located in the region of the constellation Sagittarius, creates a cloud of gas around it, which is called Nebula "Pistol". Thanks to this nebula, the star also received the name Pistol Star.

Unfortunately, this amazing star is not visible from Earth due to the fact that it is hidden by the dust clouds of the Milky Way. The brightest star in the night sky can you name a star? Sirius located in the constellation Canis Major. The magnitude of Sirius is -1,44.

You can observe Sirius from anywhere on Earth, except for the northern regions. The brightness of a star is explained not only by its high luminosity, but at a relatively close distance. Sirius is located approximately at 8.6 light years from the solar system.

The most beautiful star in the sky

Many stars are known for their brilliance of different colors, for example, a system consisting of blue and orange stars. Albireo, or bright red giant star Antares. However, the most beautiful of all the stars visible to the naked eye can be called a red-orange star. Mu Cephei, which is also called "Herschel's garnet star" after its first explorer, the British astronomer William Herschel.

The red giant Mu Cephei is located in the constellation Cepheus. it pulsating variable star and its maximum brightness changes 3.7 to 5.0. The color of the star also changes. Most of the time, Mu Cephei is a rich orange-red, but sometimes it takes on a strange purple hue.

Although Mu Cephei is a little dim, its reddish tint can be seen even with the naked eye, and if you take a simple binoculars, the spectacle will be more impressive.

The most distant space object

The farthest object visible to the naked eye is andromeda galaxy, which includes about 400 billion stars and which was noticed back in the 10th century by the ancient Persian astronomer Al Sufi. He described this object as "a small cloud".

Even if armed with binoculars or an amateur telescope, Andromeda will still look like slightly elongated blurry spot. But still, it is very impressive, especially if you know that the light from it gets to us. for 2.5 million years!

By the way, the Andromeda galaxy is approaching our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have estimated that these two galaxies will collide at about in 4 billion years, and Andromeda will be visible as a bright disk in the night sky. However, it is not yet known whether those who wish to look at the sky will remain on Earth after so many years.

• Translation

Do you know all of them, as well as the reasons for their brightness?

I am hungry for new knowledge. The point is to learn every day, and become brighter and brighter. That is the essence of this world.
- Jay Z

But those of us who can't watch such a spectacle on a periodic basis are overlooking the fact that stars seen from urban areas with high light pollution look different than they do when viewed in dark conditions. Their color and relative brightness immediately separate them from their neighboring stars, and each of them has its own story.

Residents of the northern hemisphere can probably immediately recognize the Big Dipper 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 near the Southern Cross

Each star has its own life cycle, to which it is tied from the moment of birth. In the formation of any star, the dominant element will be hydrogen - the most abundant element in the universe - and its fate is determined only by its mass. Stars with a mass of 8% of the mass of the sun can ignite a nuclear fusion reaction in the core, 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 stars are destined to burn for trillions of years.

But the more a star gains mass, the hotter its core, and the larger the region in which nuclear fusion takes place. By the time it reaches the solar mass, the star falls into class G, and its lifetime does not exceed ten billion years. Double the solar mass and you have an A star, bright blue, and less than two billion years old. And the most massive stars, classes O and B, live only a few million years, after which they run out of hydrogen fuel in the core. Not surprisingly, the most massive and hottest stars are also the brightest. A typical class A star can be 20 times brighter than the Sun, and the most massive - tens of thousands of times!

But no matter how a star begins life, the hydrogen fuel in its core ends.

And from that moment on, the star begins to burn heavier elements, expanding into a giant star, colder, 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 far greater distances than the original star was visible from.

Considering all this, let's move on to the ten brightest stars in our sky, in order of increasing brightness.

10. Achernar. A bright blue star, seven times the mass of the Sun and 3,000 times as bright. This is one of the fastest rotating stars known to us! It rotates so fast that its equatorial radius is 56% larger than the polar one, and the temperature at the pole - since it is much closer to the core - is 10,000 K more. But it is quite far from us, at 139 light years.

9. Betelgeuse. A red giant from the constellation of Orion, Betelgeuse was a bright and hot class O star until it ran out of hydrogen and switched to helium. Despite its low temperature of 3500 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. In 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 the ones we have considered. Procyon is a modest F-class star, only 40% larger than the Sun, and is on the verge of running out of hydrogen in its core - that is, 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 can be brighter than almost all but seven of the 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 at 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, in fact, these are two red giants with a temperature comparable to the sun, but each of them is about 78 times brighter than the Sun. At 42 light-years away, it's the combination of its own brightness, its relatively small 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 aliens from the movie "Contact". Astronomers used it as a standard "zero magnitude" star. It is only 25 light-years away, belongs to the main sequence stars, and is one of the brightest class A stars known to us, as well as quite young, only 400-500 million years old. At the same time, 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. This is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere, and it is easy to find it by the "handle" of the Big Dipper bucket. It is 170 times brighter than the Sun, and following the 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 itself is dimmer than any of the ten stars. 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 #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. The brightest star in the sky is...

1 Sirius. It is twice as bright as Canopus, and observers from the northern hemisphere can often see it in winter, rising behind the constellation Orion. It often twinkles because its bright light can penetrate the lower atmosphere better than the light of other stars. It is only 8.6 light-years away, but it is a Class A star, twice as massive and 25 times as luminous as the Sun.

It may surprise you that the first on the list are not the brightest or closest stars, but rather combinations of enough brightness and close enough distance to shine the brightest. Stars twice as far away have four times less brightness, so Sirius shines brighter than Canopus, which shines brighter than Alpha Centauri, and so on. 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 can be learned from this lesson: sometimes the things that seem most prominent and most obvious to us turn out to be the most unusual. Common things can be much more difficult to find, but this means that we should improve our methods of observation!

Stargazing is a truly exciting experience. Even without a telescope, you can find the brightest stars located at different distances from our planet.

The brightest stars, observed from the Earth, we have collected in today's top ten. All of them are ranked by apparent magnitude, which is a measure of the brightness of a celestial body. Naturally, we do not include the Sun in this ten, considering the stars that we observe exclusively at night.

This star from the constellation Orion is located at a distance of 495 to 650 light years. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant and much larger than the Sun. If we place a star in the place of our luminary, then it would fill the orbit of Mars. Betelgeuse is visible in the Northern Hemisphere.

9. Achernar

The bright blue star in the constellation Eridani is visible from the planet's southern hemisphere. The mass of Achernar is 6-8 times that of the sun. The star is 144 light years away from Earth. Among all, this one has the least spherical shape, because. rotates very quickly around its own axis.

8. Procyon

The star in the constellation Canis Minor is 11.4 light years away from Earth. The name of the star in Greek means "before the dog." Procyon can be observed in the Northern Hemisphere.

7. Rigel

A star in the constellation Orion is located near the equator. Rigel is located at a distance of 860 light years from Earth. This is one of the most powerful stars in our Galaxy, its mass exceeds the solar one by 17 times, and its brightness is 130,000 times.

6. Chapel

The star in the constellation Auriga is almost 41 light years away from Earth. The chapel is visible from the Northern Hemisphere. The peculiarity of this yellow giant is that it is a spectroscopic double star. Each of the components of a binary star is 2.5 times the mass of the Sun.

5. Vega

The star in the constellation Lyra is clearly visible in the Northern Hemisphere. Vega is 25 light years away from Earth. This star is well studied by astronomers, because located relatively close to the solar system.

4. Arcturus

This orange giant is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere. Arcturus is 34 light years from Earth. From the territory of Russia, the star is visible all year round. Arcturus is 110 times brighter than the Sun.

3. Toliman (Alpha Centauri)

The closest star to the Sun is 4.3 light years away from Earth. A star has three components - a binary system? Centauri A and? Centaurus B, as well as a red dwarf invisible without a telescope. It is believed that Toliman will become the first target for interstellar flights.

2. Canopus

The star in the constellation Carina is a yellowish-white supergiant. Canopus is 310 light years away from Earth. The mass of the star exceeds the solar one by 8-9 times, the diameter is 65 times larger than the Sun.

1 Sirius

The brightest star is in the constellation Canis Major. The brightness of Sirius is due to its relative proximity to Earth (8.6 light years). Sirius is visible from almost all parts of the globe except for the northernmost regions.