How much is there to be known or learned about all the objects and phenomenon in the entire universe? Remember that there are about 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe, that’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars; then that many of those stars have planets spinning around them. Then think about all the moons that orbit those planets and the comets and asteroids, the galaxies these stars form, the nebulae and black holes and everything else that’s out there. The amount of information and data is really quite staggering. This article certainly won’t contain every fact about astronomy. But they are very interesting facts nevertheless.
Let’s take a look at a small subset of astronomy: “the brightest stars as seen from Earth”. That’s discounting the Sun which is about 250,000 times closer than the next nearest star. It’s so bright that when the sky is viewed from the Earth, it washes out all the other stars in the sky during a phenomenon called daylight.
Remember that according to the scale for the magnitudes given, lower numbers are brighter. Our Sun would be about -26.73, while the full moon is -12.6. So, with that in mind, here are the top 5:
#5 is Vega, which is in Lyra, and which means ‘falling eagle’ in Arabic. It’s about 25 light years away from the Earth, with a magnitude of 0.04.
When you are thinking about these astronomical facts, please bear in mind that the ‘brightest from the Earth’ doesn’t mean ‘largest’ or ‘brightest’. The Sun is not the largest or brightest star in the universe or even the galaxy, yet it seems so bright to us because it is near compared to the other stars.
#4 Rigel Centaurus - a very bright, bluish-white supergiant star in the constellation Orion. It is a binary star, with an average apparent magnitude of 0.12. It’s scientific name is Beta Orionis. ‘Rigel Centaurus’ is Arabic for ‘the foot of the centaur’. It’s about four light years from Earth.
#3 is Arcturus. The name is Latin/Greek and means ‘guardian of the bear’. This star is roughly 37 light years away. It is in the constellation of Bootes, behind The Great Bear. It has a magnitude of 0.00
#2 Canopus. Of the top five, Canopus, the Greek name for the pilot of the ship Argo in the stories about Jason and the Argonauts, is the brightest, but because it is 313 light years from Earth, it’s only second on this list of the five brightest stars seen from Earth. It has a magnitude of -.62.
#1 is Sirius, which translate from the Greek as ’scorching’. It’s also sometimes called the ‘Dog Star’ because it is the brightest star in the constellation of Canis Major, which means ‘The Big Dog’ in Latin. It is situated only 9 light years from Earth, which makes it easily the second closest of these top five. It has a magnitude of -1.44, which makes it very easily the brightest star that can be observed in the night sky.
These few data don’t even scratch the surface of subject of astronomy but it’s something for you to think about the next time you gaze up into the night sky.
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