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Many star names are, in origin, descriptive of the part in the constellation they are found in; thus Phecda, a corruption of Arabic فخذ الدب ( fakhdh ad-dubb, 'thigh of the bear'). Only a handful of the brightest stars have individual proper names not depending on their asterism; so Sirius ('the scorcher'), Antares ('rival of Ares ', i.e ...
The night sky is the nighttime appearance of celestial objects like stars, planets, and the Moon, which are visible in a clear sky between sunset and sunrise, when the Sun is below the horizon . Natural light sources in a night sky include moonlight, starlight, and airglow, depending on location and timing. Aurorae light up the skies above the ...
The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 11 to 1.54 × 10 12 solar masses), [ 7][ 8][ 9] although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used.
Arcturus is the zenith star of the Hawaiian Islands. Using Hōkūleʻa and other stars, the Polynesians launched their double-hulled canoes from Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. Traveling east and north they eventually crossed the equator and reached the latitude at which Arcturus would appear directly overhead in the summer night sky.
Observation of non-fixed or "wandering" objects in the night sky: the five classical planets; shooting stars and meteor showers; bolides; comets; auroras; zodiacal light. Solar and lunar eclipses. Planetary conjunctions. Identification of the frigid, temperate and torrid zones of the Earth by latitude. Equator and Tropics.
The use of astronomical symbols for the Sun and Moon dates to antiquity. The forms of the symbols that appear in the original papyrus texts of Greek horoscopes are a circle with one ray () for the Sun and a crescent for the Moon. [ 3] The modern Sun symbol, a circle with a dot (☉), first appeared in Europe in the Renaissance.
Canopus is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina and the second-brightest star in the night sky. It is also designated α Carinae, which is romanized ( transliterated) to Alpha Carinae. With a visual apparent magnitude of −0.74, it is outshone only by Sirius .
720,000 km/h (450,000 mi/h) [ 10] Orbital period. ~230 million years [ 10] The Solar System[ d] is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. [ 11] It was formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc.