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Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky.Its name is derived from the Greek word Σείριος (Latin script: Seirios), meaning lit. 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, and abbreviated α CMa or Alpha CMa.
The well-known binary star Sirius, seen here in a Hubble photograph from 2005, with Sirius A in the center, and white dwarf, Sirius B, to the left bottom from it. A binary star or binary star system is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other.
The Sun is the brightest star as viewed from Earth, at −26.78 mag.The second brightest is Sirius at −1.46 mag. For comparison, the brightest non-stellar objects in the Solar System have maximum brightnesses of:
A multiple star system consists of two or more stars that appear from Earth to be close to one another in the sky. [dubious – discuss] This may result from the stars actually being physically close and gravitationally bound to each other, in which case it is a physical multiple star, or this closeness may be merely apparent, in which case it is an optical multiple star [a] Physical multiple ...
In 2016, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) [2] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin, dated July 2016, [3] included a table of 125 stars comprising the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN (on 30 June and 20 July 2016) together with names of stars adopted by the IAU Executive Committee ...
A B-type main-sequence star (B V) is a main-sequence (hydrogen-burning) star of spectral type B and luminosity class V. These stars have from 2 to 16 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 10,000 and 30,000 K. [1]
Thuban (/ ˈ θj uː b æ n /), [6] with Bayer designation Alpha Draconis or α Draconis, is a binary star system in the northern constellation of Draco.A relatively inconspicuous star in the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere, it is historically significant as having been the north pole star from the 4th to 2nd millennium BC.
A Hertzsprung–Russell diagram plots the luminosity (or absolute magnitude) of a star against its color index (represented as B−V). The main sequence is visible as a prominent diagonal band from upper left to lower right.