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Using this scale, it was found that the stars traditionally placed
in the same category sometimes had brightnesses that fall outside
the numerical bounds for that category. In fact, a few stars are
brighter than the first magnitude, so to accommodate these extreme
cases it's necessary to assign them negative magnitudes. The
brightest star in the sky is Sirius, whose magnitude is -1.45.
(Incidentally, Sirius is called the Dog Star, since it's the most
prominent star in the constellation Canis Major, and it becomes
visible in the Northern hemisphere only during a certain span of
time in the summer, which is why we call that period the "dog days
of summer".) The next brightest star visible from Earth is Canopus,
which has a magnitude of -0.7. However, this star is in the Southern
sky and is not visible from most places in the Northern hemisphere.
Sirius and Canopus are the only two stars with significantly negative
"magnitudes". Alpha Centauri and Arcturus (the 3rd and 4th brightest
stars in the sky) have magnitudes very close to 0.0 (actually just
slightly negative), and all the remaining stars have positive
magnitude. Only about a dozen stars have magnitude less than (i.e.,
brighter than) 1.0.
Sun -26.74
100 Watt bulb at 100 ft -13.70
Moon (full) -12.73
Venus -4.22
Jupiter -2.60
Mars -2.02
Sirius -1.45
Mercury -0.20
Alpha Centuri -0.10
Vega 0.00
Saturn 0.70
Polaris (North Star) 2.00
Stars in Big Dipper 1.8 to 3.3
Andromeda galaxy 3.50
Uranus 5.50
Naked eye visibility limit 6.00=======
Neptune 7.90
Crab Nebula 8.60
3C273 (brightest quasar) 12.80
Pluto 14.90
Ground telescope limit 25.00
Hubble Telescope limit 28.00
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5/14/23, 2:47 PM The Stars In The Sky
To see an animated Javascript illustration showing the positions of all
the stars with magnitudes less than 3.5, click on
This applet shows the 297 brightest stars projected onto a sphere,
like a planetarium.
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