Whats the second brightest star in space?
The North Star (Polaris) isn’t the brightest star in the sky. It just happens to be the one that our planet is pointed at, so it always remains in the same position in the sky, while everything else moves. It’s moderately bright, apparent magnitude of about 2. But that’s not even in the top 25. Apparent magnitude measures how bright something appears to us. Far-away stars may be much brighter if you were up close, but the distance keeps them from appearing all that bright, so they have high magnitudes. High magnitudes, counter-intuitively, are less bright. The full moon has a magnitude of -13, and the sun has a magnitude of -27. The brightest star in the sky is not the North Star, but Sirius. Sirius is easy to find: locate Orion’s Belt. Follow the three stars down, and they end at Sirius. Sirius has a magnitude of -1.5. The second brightest star is Canopus, apparent magnitude of -.7. Canopus is a lot harder to find, and it’s not actually visible from much of the United States, and comp
