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Brightest planet −2.20 [6]: 39 −2.94 [6]: 39 Jupiter: Planet −1.46 Sirius: Binary star system: Brightest night star −0.74 Canopus: Star −0.29 [7] Alpha Centauri AB Binary star system Part of a triple star system with Proxima Centauri: −0.05 Arcturus: Star Brightest Population II star 0.03 −0.02 Vega: Star 0.08 0.03 [8] Capella ...
It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of 4.0. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years (412.1 ± 6.1 pc) away [3] [6] and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. M42 is estimated to be 25 light-years across (so its apparent size from Earth is approximately 1 degree).
It was an object first noted of interest using the IRAS satellite by Fred Gillett and his associates in 1986, as a pointlike light source [d] [16] and its nature was found in 1989 by Gillett et al. [17] The planetary nebula's central star is a blue star. The nebula, designated GJJC1, is likely about only 6,000 years old. [3]
A preliminary version of the catalogue first appeared in 1774 in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences for the year 1771. [3] [4] [5] The first version of Messier's catalogue contained 45 objects, which were not numbered. Eighteen of the objects were discovered by Messier; the rest had been previously observed by other astronomers. [6]
While the Messier catalogue is used by amateur astronomers as a list of deep-sky objects for observation, Moore noted that Messier's list was not compiled for that purpose and excluded many of the sky's brightest deep-sky objects, [1] such as the Hyades, the Double Cluster (NGC 869 and NGC 884), and the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253). The Messier ...
The unusually bright quasar is located 13 billion light-years away and experts say the discovery could unlock clues about our universe’s early beginnings. The brightest celestial object in the ...
Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and peculiar object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers. [ 5 ] The most massive star that has formed in this region is HD 164492A, an O7.5III star with a mass more than 20 times the mass of the Sun . [ 6 ]
The Whirlpool Galaxy lies at a distance of 23 [2] to 31 million light-years from Earth. [18] Based on the 1991 measurement by the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies using the D 25 isophote at the B-band, the Whirlpool Galaxy has a diameter of 23.58 kiloparsecs (76,900 light-years). [2] [5] Overall the galaxy is about 88% the size of ...