Stars are massive shining spheres of hot gas, the closest of which is our Sun. Stars are primarily made of hydrogen, smaller amounts of helium, and trace amounts of other elements. Even the most abundant of the other elements present in stars are only present in very small quantities.
Those stars which you see with your naked eye in the night sky all belong to the Milky Way Galaxy, the huge system of stars that contains our solar system. When you look up into the nights sky what are the brightest stars you can see?
Here are the Top 5 Brightest stars as seen from Earth.
1. Sirius
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. What the naked eye perceives as a single star is actually a binary star system, consisting of a white main-sequence star of spectral type A1V, 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.
Sirius appears bright because of both its intrinsic luminosity and its proximity to Earth. At a distance of 2.6 parsecs, as determined by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite, the Sirius system is one of Earth’s near neighbors; for Northern-hemisphere observers between 30 degrees and 73 degrees of latitude (including almost all of Europe and North America), it is the closest star (after the Sun) that can be seen with the naked eye. Sirius is gradually moving closer to the Solar System, so it will slightly increase in brightness over the next 60,000 years. After that time its distance will begin to recede, but it will continue to be the brightest star in the Earth’s sky for the next 210,000 years.
Sirius appears bright because of both its intrinsic luminosity and its proximity to Earth. At a distance of 2.6 parsecs, as determined by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite, the Sirius system is one of Earth’s near neighbors; for Northern-hemisphere observers between 30 degrees and 73 degrees of latitude (including almost all of Europe and North America), it is the closest star (after the Sun) that can be seen with the naked eye. Sirius is gradually moving closer to the Solar System, so it will slightly increase in brightness over the next 60,000 years. After that time its distance will begin to recede, but it will continue to be the brightest star in the Earth’s sky for the next 210,000 years.
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