Sirius:the brightest star

 Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, with an apparent visual magnitude of −1.46. It is a binary star in the constellation Canis Major. The bright component of the binary is a blue-white star 25.4 times as luminous as the Sun. It has a radius 1.71 times that of the Sun and a surface temperature of 9,940 kelvins (K), which is more than 4,000 K higher than the Sun's. Its distance from the solar system is 8.6 light-years, only twice the distance of the nearest known star system beyond the Sun, the Alpha Centauri system. Its name comes from the Greek word “sparkling” or “scorching.”

                    Sirius is highly visible in the Northern Hemisphere's winter night sky, because the star has a high luminosity, or intrinsic brightness, relative to other stars, and because it's relatively close to Earth (8.6 light-years away). According to NASA, Sirius has a mass that's two times that of Earth's sun.

                                                   Sirius is highly visible in the Northern Hemisphere's winter night sky, because the star has a high luminosity, or intrinsic brightness, relative to other stars, and because it's relatively close to Earth (8.6 light-years away). According to NASA, Sirius has a mass that's two times that of Earth's sun.