How hot is the brightest star?
When we look at the night sky, it is plain that some stars are much brighter than others. But our view of the heavens tends to fool us. A brilliant star at a great distance may look paler than a star which happens to be but a short sky distance away. And the stars which look brightest arc not always the hottest. Our sun, of course, is thousands of times more brilliant than the brightest of the stars which appear in the night sky. But the sun is actually a medium type star in size, temperature and brightness. All the other stars look ditmner because they arc billions of miles away. And, no star, other than the sun is near enough to the earth for us to feel any of its warmth. The brightest star we see in the sky is sirius, the dog star. But sirius looks only a few shades brighter than betelguese, the giant star which is some 40 times farther away. The brightness of a star is called magnitude, and each star has two magnitudes. Its apparent magnitude is the brightness it seems to have in o
