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How bright is a star?
Stars can be as bright as absolute magnitude -8 and as faint as absolute magnitude +16 or fainter. There are thus (a very few) stars more than 100 times brighter than Sirius, while hardly any are known fainter than Wolf 356.
Can we see stars from other galaxies?
We can’t see individual stars in other galaxies. (And the only galaxy beyond our own that’s visible to the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere is Andromeda — and you would need very dark skies and a map to find it.)
How far away are stars we can see?
In the very darkest conditions, the human eye can see stars at magnitude 6.5 or greater. Which works about to about 9,000 individual stars. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is 8.6 light years. The most distant bright star, Deneb, is about 1500 light years away from Earth.
What galaxy can we see that looks like a star?
They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy. All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
How big is a star?
Stars come in huge range of different sizes. Neutron stars can be just 20 to 40 km in diameter, whereas white dwarf can be very similar in size to Earth’s. The largest supergiants, on the other hand, can be more than 1500 times larger than our Sun.
How do you measure the brightness of a star?
We measure the brightness of these stars using the magnitude scale. The magnitude scale seems a little backwards. The lower the number, the brighter the object is; and the higher the number, the dimmer it is. This scale is logarithmic and set so that every 5 steps up equals a 100 times decrease in brightness.
What is the brightest star in the sky Right Now?
The 10 Brightest Stars in the Sky. Sirius. The bright star Sirius. malcolm park / Getty Images. Canopus. Rigel Kentaurus. Arcturus. Vega. Two images of Vega and its dust disk, as seen by Spitzer Space Telescope. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.
How far away are the brightest stars in winter?
Winter brings another opportunity to see starlight from a range of eras. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is only 8.6 light-years away. Meanwhile, the two brightest stars of Orion are distant but shine so brightly because they emit much more light.
Why are some stars brighter than others?
Updated September 04, 2019. The brightest stars in our night sky are an object of constant interest to stargazers. Some appear very bright to us because they’re relatively nearby, while others look bright because they’re massive and very hot, pumping out lots of radiation.
How can the light of stars billions of light years away?
How can the light of stars billions of light years away from the earth have reached us if the earth is only thousands of years old? A light-year is the maximum distance that light can travel in one year in the vacuum of space. Consequently, it takes billions of years for light to travel billions of light-years through space.