A star can be defined as a celestial body of hot gases that radiates energy derived from thermonuclear reactions in the interior. More simply put however, they are large, self luminous heavenly bodies that exist and are seen in the night sky. Stars are also known as suns, and there are more of them in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth. Each star, much like a person, is an individual with its own personality, and they come in different colors, sizes, shapes, and ages. One trait however, that makes a star unique, is its brightness. Astronomers today measure the brightness of heavenly objects using a system invented by Hipparchus in 120 B.C. Hipparchus ranked the brightness of stars in the sky based on a scale of 1 to 6 as seen from the Earth. The brightest stars he could see were categorized as first magnitude, and the faintest were classified as sixth magnitude (brightness is dependent on luminosity and distance).
All stars shine with a different level of brightness, but one that outshines the rest, is a star called Sirius. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, comes from the Greek word Seirius, meaning, "searing" or "scorching." Blazing at a visual magnitude of -1.42, it is twice as bright as any other star in our sky. Sirius resides in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog, and is commonly called the Dog Star. "It barks forth flame and doubles the burning heat of the Sun," said Manilius, expressing a belief that the star had a heating effect. The ancient Greeks thought that the rising of Sirius marked the hottest part of the summer. This is the origin of phrase “the dog days of summer”. Due to the earth’s changing rotation over the last 26,000 years, as a result of the attraction from the sun and moon, Sirius no longer marks that hottest part of the summer. Now, Sirius is best seen during the winter months for northern hemisphere observers.
Sirius is currently the brightest star that we have observed from...