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Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris (Latinized to Alpha Ursae Minoris) and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude that fluctuates around 1.98, [3] it is the brightest star in the constellation and is readily visible to the naked eye at ...
Currently, there is no South Pole Star like Polaris, the so-called North Star. Sigma Octantis is the closest near naked-eye star to the south celestial pole, but at apparent magnitude 5.47 it is barely visible on a clear night, making it less useful for casual navigational or astronomy alignment purposes.
Sigma Octantis is the current southern pole star, whose counterpart is Polaris, the current North Star. To an observer in the southern hemisphere, Sigma Octantis appears almost motionless and all the other stars in the Southern sky appear to rotate around it. It is part of a small "half hexagon" shape.
With this orientation, the navigator can hold the star chart overhead, and the arrangement of the stars on the chart will resemble the stars in the sky. [1] In the star charts, constellations are labelled with capital letters and indicated by dotted lines collecting their stars. The 58 selected stars for navigation are shown in blue and ...
Seventh brightest star in the night sky. Canopus (α Carinae) 73.3 [96] AD Second brightest star in the night sky. Gacrux (γ Crucis) 73 [97] L/T eff: Twenty-sixth brightest star in the night sky. Polaris (α Ursae Minoris) 46.27 ± 0.42 [98] AD The current star in the North Pole. It is a Classical Cepheid variable, and the brightest example of ...
Viewers in most of the continental United States, eastern Canada, and parts of Africa and Mexico can look for a celestial triangle in the sky when evening twilight ends at 6:11 p.m. ET. Mars will ...
The north celestial pole currently is within one degree of the bright star Polaris (named from the Latin stella polaris, meaning "pole star"). This makes Polaris, colloquially known as the "North Star", useful for navigation in the Northern Hemisphere: not only is it always above the north point of the horizon, but its altitude angle is always ...
Ursa Minor has traditionally been important for navigation, particularly by mariners, because of Polaris being the north pole star. Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation, is a yellow-white supergiant and the brightest Cepheid variable star in the night sky, ranging in apparent magnitude from 1.97 to 2.00.