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Data on different stars can be of somewhat different reliability, depending on the attention one particular star has received as well as largely differing physical difficulties in analysis (see the Pistol Star for an example). The last stars in the list are familiar nearby stars put there for comparison, and not among the most luminous known.
It includes all stars brighter than magnitude +2.50 in visible light, measured using a V-band filter in the UBV photometric system. Stars in binary systems (or other multiples) are listed by their total or combined brightness if they appear as a single star to the naked eye, or listed separately if they do not.
Faintest stars visible in an urban neighborhood with naked eye +2 star system T CrB(when nova) seen from Earth Star system that goes nova every 80 years +2.4 Halley's Comet: seen from Earth About Magnitude during 1986 perihelion +3.44: Andromeda Galaxy: seen from Earth M31 [50] +4 Orion Nebula: seen from Earth M42 +4.38: moon Ganymede: seen ...
The closest system is Alpha Centauri, with Proxima Centauri as the closest star in that system, at 4.2465 light-years from Earth. The brightest, most massive and most luminous object among those 131 is Sirius A , which is also the brightest star in Earth's night sky ; its white dwarf companion Sirius B is the hottest object among them.
He allocated the first magnitude to the 20 brightest stars and the sixth magnitude to the faintest stars visible to the naked eye. In the 19th century, this ancient scale of apparent magnitude was logarithmically defined, so that a star of magnitude 1.00 is exactly 100 times as bright as one of 6.00.
Note that the brighter the star, the smaller the magnitude: Bright "first magnitude" stars are "1st-class" stars, while stars barely visible to the naked eye are "sixth magnitude" or "6th-class". The system was a simple delineation of stellar brightness into six distinct groups but made no allowance for the variations in brightness within a group.
Centaurus has 281 stars above magnitude 6.5, meaning that they are visible to the unaided eye, the most of any constellation. Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the Sun, has a high proper motion; it will be a mere half-degree from Beta Centauri in approximately 4000 years. [2]
Stars in the most distant orbit around one another Regulus/SDSS J1007+1930 2024 ~3.9 parsecs (13 ly) [84] Nearest multiple star system: Alpha Centauri: 1839 1.30 parsecs (4.2 ly) This was one of the first three stars to have its distance measured. [85] [86] [9] [87] Nearest solitary star Barnard's Star: 1916 1.83 parsecs (6.0 ly) Nearest binary ...