• Question: what's the brightest star in the sky

    Asked by azzy111 to Carla, Madgie, Nick, Vicky, Werner on 9 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Nick Groves-Kirkby

      Nick Groves-Kirkby answered on 9 Nov 2013:

      As this isn’t something I know much about, I’ll cheat a little bit and say that the brightest star we see from Earth is The Sun.

      Remember, The Sun is a big burning ball of gas just like all the other stars in the sky. From our point of view it is so bright that we cannot see any other stars during daytime.

      I also used google, and found that the brightest star we see in the night sky is called ‘Sirius’.

      Sirius is twice the size of The Sun and produces 25 times more light. But we see the sun as being brighter because it is much closer to us.

    • Photo: Carla Turner

      Carla Turner answered on 9 Nov 2013:

      The brightest star to us in the day is the sun and at night is a star called Sirus. But we think its mainly because they are close, not because they are the biggest in the universe.

      I did go to a talk last night where they said often stars are so bright we cant see the planets around them with our telescopes.

      However they measure how bright the star is over a period of months and they can measure when the star is less bright and use it to work out where planets are and how big they are! Pretty cool!

    • Photo: Werner Muller

      Werner Muller answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      I was mistaken and found Venus to be the brightest star until I learned that it is a planet.

    • Photo: Marlene Lorgen

      Marlene Lorgen answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      I was going to say the Sun, so I have learned something new! Thanks guys 🙂

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