Sirius | Brightest Star in the Night Sky | Binary Star System | Facty Universe

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Sirius is a binary star system situated 8.6 lys away from our Solar System and in the constellation Canis Major, it is also known as Alpha Canis Majoris or The Dog Star. Usually Sirius is the brightest known star in the night sky, The blue-white component of this star makes it 25.4 times more luminous than that of the Sun. As it is a Binary Star System, it consist of two stars i.e. Sirius A and Sirius B...

SIRIUS A

Sirius A is a main sequence star having radius 1.71 times that of the Sun, its mass is about 2.06 times that of the Sun and its Surface temperature is about 9940 K (9670℃) i.e. 4000 K higher than that of the Sun.

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SIRIUS B

Sirius B is a white dwarf star having size more similar to that of the Sun with the radius of 0.0084 times that of the sun and the mass is about 1.02 times that of the Sun making it quite dense than the Sun, but the difference in temperature is far more, Sirius B is much hotter than the Sun as well as Sirius A having surface temperature 25.000 K (24,730℃).

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FACTS

Sirius A and its companion star Sirius B revolve together with much more familiar way with a complete orbit of 50 years, both are separated with a distance 20 times more than that of the Earth from the Sun.

Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was the first person to reported Sirius as a binary star system which has a companion star, and Sirius B became the first white dwarf star to be discovered in 1844. The companion star Sirius B was first seen in 1862 by an American astronomer Alvan Clark.

Sirius usually known as The Dog Star because of its existence in the the constellation Canis Major which is also known as The Great Dog. The belief was made by ancient Egyptians, that the heliacal rising (rising of a star just before the Sun) of Sirius causes the annual flood in the Nile river. they called those days The Dog Days.

They were aware of heliacal rising of Sirius occur in the period of every 365.25 days, which makes the position of Sirius relative to that of the Earth's night sky over a period of a solar year. Sirius was also known as Sothis by them and it was the most important common navigation in the Pacific.

Sirius constantly moving closer to the Sun, which will make it slightly brighter in coming 60,000 years, after that the distance will start to increase and it will become dim or faint. but Sirius will continue as the brightest star in the night sky over the period of next 2,10,000 years.