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Sirius appears bright because of its intrinsic luminosity and its proximity to the Solar System. At a distance of 2.64 parsecs (8.6 ly), the Sirius system is one of Earth's nearest neighbours. Sirius is gradually moving closer to the Solar System and it is expected to increase in brightness slightly over the next 60,000 years to reach a peak ...
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:
Canis Major is a prominent constellation because of its many bright stars. These include Sirius (Alpha Canis Majoris), the brightest star in the night sky, as well as three other stars above magnitude 2.0. [6]
The brightest, most massive and most luminous object among those 131 is Sirius A, which is also the brightest star in Earth's night sky; its white dwarf companion Sirius B is the hottest object among them. The largest object within the 20 light-years is Procyon.
For example, Sirius, the brightest star of the celestial sphere, has a magnitude of −1.4 in the visible. Negative magnitudes for other very bright astronomical objects can be found in the table below. Astronomers have developed other photometric zero point systems as alternatives to Vega normalized systems.
In Greek and Roman mythology and religion, Sirius (/ ˈ s ɪ r ɪ ə s /, SEE-ree-əss; Ancient Greek: Σείριος, romanized: Seírios, lit. 'scorching' pronounced) is the god and personification of the star Sirius, also known as the Dog Star, the brightest star in the night sky and the most prominent star in the constellation of Canis Major (or the Greater Dog). [1]
Sirius: Binary star system: Brightest night star −0.74 Canopus: Star −0.29 [7] Alpha Centauri AB Binary star system Part of a triple star system with Proxima Centauri: −0.05 Arcturus: Star Brightest Population II star 0.03 −0.02 Vega: Star 0.08 0.03 [8] Capella: Quadruple star system: Brightest quadruple star system 0.13 0.05 [9] Rigel ...
For comparison, Sirius has an absolute magnitude of only 1.4, which is still brighter than the Sun, whose absolute visual magnitude is 4.83. The Sun's absolute bolometric magnitude is set arbitrarily, usually at 4.75. [4] [5] Absolute magnitudes of stars generally range from approximately −10 to +20. The absolute magnitudes of galaxies can be ...