The Top 10 Brightest Stars as Seen From Earth
These 10 bright lights are the ten brightest stars as seen from Earth and apart from the number one and most obvious one, the rest might be a surprise to you and to many of us would have never heard of the other 9 before. There is no need to shine a light on this lot, they provide their own…
The Top 10 Brightest Stars as Seen From Earth
Achernar
10 – Name: Achernar – Apparent Magnitude: 0.46
Wiki Info: Achernar is the name of the brightest component of the binary system designated Alpha Eridani which is the brightest ‘star’ or point of light in, and lying at the southern tip of, the constellation of Eridanus, and the tenth-brightest in the night sky. The two components are designated Alpha Eridani A and Alpha Eridani B. As determined by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite, it is approximately 139 light-years from the Sun.
Procyon
9 – Name: Procyon – Apparent Magnitude: 0.38
Wiki Info: Procyon, also designated Alpha Canis Minoris, is the brightest star in the constellation of Canis Minor. To the naked eye, it appears to be a single star, the eighth-brightest in the night sky with a visual apparent magnitude of 0.34. It is a binary star system, consisting of a white main-sequence star of spectral type F5 IV–V, named Procyon A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DQZ, named Procyon B.
Rigel
8 – Name: Rigel – Apparent Magnitude: 0.12
Wiki Info: Rigel, also designated Beta Orionis, is generally the seventh-brightest star in the night sky and the brightest star in the constellation of Orion—though periodically it is outshone within the constellation by the variable Betelgeuse. With a visual magnitude of 0.13, it is a remote and luminous star some 863 light-years distant from Earth.
Capella
7 – Name: Capella – Apparent Magnitude: 0.08
Wiki Info: Capella, also designated Alpha Aurigae, is the brightest star in the constellation of Auriga, the sixth-brightest in the night sky, and the third-brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere after Arcturus and Vega. A prominent star in the winter sky of the northern hemisphere, it is circumpolar to observers north of 44°N. Its name meaning “little goat” in Latin, Capella depicted the goat Amalthea that suckled Zeus in classical mythology. The Capella system is relatively close, at only 42.9 light-years from the Sun.
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Vega
6 – Name: Vega – Apparent Magnitude: 0.03
Wiki Info: Vega has been extensively studied by astronomers, leading it to be termed “arguably the next most important star in the sky after the Sun.” Vega was the northern pole star around 12,000 BC and will be so again around the year 13,727 when the declination will be +86°14′. Vega was the first star other than the Sun to be photographed and the first to have its spectrum recorded. It was one of the first stars whose distance was estimated through parallax measurements. Vega has served as the baseline for calibrating the photometric brightness scale, and was one of the stars used to define the mean values for the UBV photometric system.
Arcturus
5 – Name: Arcturus – Apparent Magnitude: -0.04
Wiki Info: Arcturus, also designated Alpha Boötis, is the brightest star in the constellation of Boötes, the fourth-brightest in the night sky, and the brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere. Together with Spica and Denebola Arcturus is part of the Spring Triangle asterism and, by extension, also of the Great Diamond along with the star Cor Caroli.
Relatively close at 36.7 light-years from the Sun, Arcturus is a red giant of spectral type K0III—an ageing star around 7.1 billion years old that has used up its core hydrogen and moved off the main sequence. It is 1.08 ± 0.06 times as massive as the Sun, but has expanded to 25.4 ± 0.2 times its diameter and is around 170 times as luminous.
Alpha Centauri
4 – Name: Alpha Centauri – Apparent Magnitude: -0.27
Wiki Info: Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to the Solar System, being 4.37 light-years from the Sun. It consists of three stars: Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, which form the binary star Alpha Centauri AB, and a small and faint red dwarf, Alpha Centauri C, which is loosely gravitationally bound and orbiting the other two at a current distance of about 13,000 astronomical units. To the unaided eye, the two main components appear as a single point of light with an apparent visual magnitude of −0.27, forming the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus and is the third-brightest star in the night sky, outshone only by Sirius and Canopus.
Canopus
3 – Name: Canopus – Apparent Magnitude: -0.72
Wiki Info: Canopus is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina, and the second-brightest star in the night-time sky, after Sirius. Canopus’s visual magnitude is −0.74, and it has an absolute magnitude of −5.71. Canopus is a bright giant of spectral type A9, so it is essentially white when seen with the naked eye. It is located in the far southern sky, at a year 2000 declination of −52° 42′ and a right ascension of 06h 24.0m.
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Sirius
2 – Name: Sirius – Apparent Magnitude: -1.46
Wiki Info: Sirius is a star system and the brightest star in the Earth’s night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The system has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris. What the naked eye perceives as a single star is a binary star system, consisting of a white main-sequence star of spectral type A0 or A1, termed Sirius A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DA2, called Sirius B. The distance separating Sirius A from its companion varies between 8.2 and 31.5 AU.
Sun
1 – Name: Sun – Apparent Magnitude: -26.72
Wiki Info: The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 1.39 million kilometers, i.e. 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Sun’s mass consists of hydrogen (~73%); the rest is mostly helium (~25%), with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron.