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The phrase "fixed star" is technically incorrect, but nonetheless it is used in an historical context, and in classical mechanics. When used as a visual reference for observations, they usually are called background stars or simply distant stars, still retaining the intuitive meaning of they being "fixed" in some practical sense.
By convention, astronomers grouped prominent stars into asterisms and constellations and used them to track the motions of the planets and the inferred position of the Sun. [4] The motion of the Sun against the background stars (and the horizon) was used to create calendars, which could be used to regulate agricultural practices. [7]
Although stars normally reside within galaxies, they can be expelled by gravitational forces when galaxies collide. It is commonly believed that intergalactic stars may primarily have originated from extremely small galaxies, since it is easier for stars to escape a smaller galaxy's gravitational pull, than that of a large galaxy. [3]
The two stars are the closest stars to the Sun after their companion Proxima Centauri, at 0.21 light-year away from the two, and at 4.243 light-years away from the Sun. At −0.27v visual magnitude, Alpha Centauri appears to the naked-eye as a single star and is fainter than Sirius and Canopus. The next brightest star in the night sky is Arcturus.
Crux (/ k r ĘŚ k s /) is a constellation of the southern sky that is centred on four bright stars in a cross-shaped asterism commonly known as the Southern Cross.It lies on the southern end of the Milky Way's visible band.
Stellar parallax is the apparent shift of position of any nearby star (or other object) against the background of distant stars. By extension, it is a method for determining the distance to the star through trigonometry, the stellar parallax method .
Proper motion is the astrometric measure of the observed changes in the apparent places of stars or other celestial objects in the sky, as seen from the center of mass of the Solar System, compared to the abstract background of the more distant stars. [1]
The first one to address the problem of an infinite number of stars and the resulting heat in the Cosmos was Cosmas Indicopleustes, a 6th-century Greek monk from Alexandria, who states in his Topographia Christiana: "The crystal-made sky sustains the heat of the Sun, the moon, and the infinite number of stars; otherwise, it would have been full of fire, and it could melt or set on fire."