Do you know which star is the brightest in the Earth’s night sky? The answer is Sirius, a star so bright that, when it comes to brightness, it is second only to the Moon and some planetslike Venus for example.
Due to its luminosity, Sirius was already well known to ancient peoples, so much so that its name means “luminous” in Greek. This is a star found in ancient astronomical records from Greek, Polynesian and other cultures. The Egyptians, for example, called it the Nile Star and used it as a reference to create their calendars.
Despite this, astronomers were surprised in 1862 when they discovered that she was 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. It is accompanied by Sirius B, a star about 10,000 times fainter than the star. its neighbor, so it is difficult to see it 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 Canis Major constellation and is officially called Alpha Canis Majoris due to its position in the constellation. Sirius A has an apparent magnitude of -1.46 (the smaller the number, the brighter it is) and shines 20 times brighter than the Sun.
It is only 8.7 light years away from us and is considered the seventh closest star to Earth. Sirius is a type A star, that is, it is much hotter than the Sun and has a surface temperature of about 9,400 ° C, while that of the Sun is about 5,500 ° C. It has just over two solar masses and emits 26 times more energy than our star.
The brightest stars 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 to be very bright in our sky appear to be so 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 in the universe:
R136a1
This is one of the most massive and brightest stars we know. THE star R136a1 it is nearly 10 million times brighter than the Sun and is 150,000 light years from Earth, inside the Tarantula Nebula.
When it formed, it had over 300 solar masses, but today it is between 170 and 230 times the mass of the sun.
Pistol star
The so-called Pistol Star is one of the brightest stars in the world. Milky Way. It emits 10 million times the energy released by the Sun and is so large that, if placed in place of our star, it could easily reach the diameter of the Earth’s orbit.
The star is about 25,000 light years from Earth and its nickname derives from the shape of the nebula that surrounds it. It is not visible to the naked eye because it is hidden by the dust that surrounds it.
Vega
Vega is a rather bright star due to its proximity and brightness, of magnitude 0.03. It is only 25 light years away from us and is considered one of the brightest stars easily visible from central-northern latitudes.
It has a bluish glow, indicating a surface temperature of approximately 9,400 ° C. This star is only 2.5 times the diameter of the Sun and has already reached half its life. Therefore, Vega should take half a billion years to run out of its fuel reserves.
Rigel
This is a star whose brightness it is 120,000 times larger than that of the Sun. Rigel is 863 light years away from us and is in the constellation of Orion the Hunter. It is a bluish supergiant with a surface temperature of approximately 11,600 ° C.
In terms of size, Rigel is 79 times the diameter of the Sun, with only 21 times the mass of our star. She is accompanied by the 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 bright because they are close to each other, Deneb is quite 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.
