Which stars are bright?

As you know, the starry sky, like the globe,conditionally divided into two hemispheres: northern and southern. And in every hemisphere there are many bright stars. First we will tell you which is the brightest star of the entire starry sky, and then we will talk about specific hemispheres. But before you can name the brightest star visible on the earth's sky, you need to define the classification by which we will evaluate the brightness.

What is the brightest star

As many know, in addition to the apparent magnitude, the starscan be assessed and in absolute brightness, that is, regardless of their distance to the ground. And here, absolutely different stars come to the fore. As for the apparent brightness, here the primacy belongs to the southern hemisphere, and the brightest star of the entire earth's sky (with the exception of the Sun, of course) is Sirius. Sirius - the main star in the constellation of the Great Dog, his Alpha (stars in the constellations are called Greek letters in alphabetical order - from the most striking and significant ones, which receive the first letters and in descending order). Sirius is also seen in the northern latitudes except in the regions of the far north. From the Earth, this star is at a distance of just over 8.5 light years, that is one of the closest to us. It is a very beautiful star that looks like a small spotlight in the night sky. In the middle of the XIX century, the astronomer F. Bessel suggested that Sirius is actually a double star, which was confirmed twenty years later by A.Klarkom. The star we see is called Sirius A, and the invisible companion is a white dwarf - Sirius B.

Other bright stars

Following in apparent brightness behind Sirius followedtwo more stars of the southern hemisphere - Canopus and Toliman. Canopus is the Alpha constellation of Kiel, and Toliman is Alpha Centauri, the closest star to us, located only 4.3 light years from us. For comparison, Canopus from us at a distance of 310 light years - just imagine how bright it would shine if it were at least at the same distance from the Earth as Sirius. And only at 4-6 places in terms of brightness are located three stars of our northern hemisphere - Arcturus, Vega and the Capella. Many believe that the brightest of our hemisphere is Vega, but Arcturus is still somewhat brighter. This is the only star that has a negative visible stellar brightness value - -0.04. The brightness of Vega is 0.03, and the Capella is 0.08 according to the developed scale. Arcturus is the Alphabet of the constellation Bootes, Vega - Alpha Lyra, and the Chapel - Alpha Auriga.

Absolute brightness

Which stars are bright? As for absolute brightness, the classification here is completely different. Of the stars that we described above, only Canopus got into the "top ten" - he takes an honorable third place here. As for the first two stars, the very what is called the really bright star is Deneb - the star of our northern hemisphere, the Alpha constellation of Cygnus, and the second place is occupied by Rigel - Beta Orion. Rigel, true, refers to the southern hemisphere, but the constellation of Orion with the beautiful stars Betelgeuse (red giant), Rigel (blue star) and Bellatrix (white star) and the famous Orion belt, consisting of Mintaka stars, Alnilam and Alnitak, is perfectly visible on our night sky. By the way, Deneb is at a colossal distance from the Earth - about one and a half thousand light years. If he was 10 times closer, he would eclipse the sun even in brightness. Rigel from the Earth is also at a very large distance - 870 light years.