What is the biggest star in the universe?
The largest known star in the universe is UY Scuti, a hypergiant with a radius around 1,700 times larger than the sun.
Sirius, also called Alpha Canis Majoris or the Dog Star, brightest star in the night sky, with apparent visual magnitude −1.46. … It is a binary star in the constellation Canis Major. The bright component of the binary is a blue-white star 25.4 times as luminous as the Sun.
Next week, we’ll take a look at some of the objects you can see in Canis Major if you don’t mind breaking out your binoculars.
Canis Minor is nothing much to look at and contains practically nothing for a stargazer to see besides, perhaps, its brightest star. Procyon. However, Canis Major is awash with some of the most spectacular sights in the starry sky.
The javelin was magical. Its bearer could never miss, which turned out to be bad luck for Procris. She and her husband were hunting one day when Cephalus accidentally ran her through.
Ah, another inspiring tale of yore. It takes all kinds to make a universe, I suppose.
Cephalus decided to do his good deed for the decade and set the dog loose to catch the fox. There was one small problem — the fox was so fast that nothing could catch it.
What kind of dog is Canis Major?
Its name is Latin for “greater dog” in contrast to Canis Minor, the “lesser dog”; both figures are commonly represented as following the constellation of Orion the hunter through the sky. … Canis Major.
| Constellation | |
|---|---|
| List of stars in Canis Major | |
| Brightest star | Sirius (α CMa) (−1.46) |
| Messier objects | 1 |
| Meteor showers | |
Like most diehard hunters, Orion has an emergency backup dog, Canis Minor (the “Lesser Dog”), far to his left and far harder to find than other constellations in the group. Its only bright star is Procyon, which means “before the dog” in Greek.
In Greek mythology, Orion (/əˈraɪən/; Ancient Greek: Ὠρίων or Ὠαρίων; Latin: Orion) was a giant huntsman whom Zeus (or perhaps Artemis) placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion.
How to find Canis Major, the Great Dog
Orion parades across the northern winter sky followed by his two odedient hunting dogs, Canis Major and Minor.
I shot the s for this panorama of the winter sky last night, December 6/7, on a frosty and cool night at our retreat in New Mexico.
The scene takes in Orion at upper right, with his signature stars, red Betelgeuse and blue Rigel, plus the dog stars Procyon at upper left (the brightest star in Canis Minor), and Sirius at lower centre (the brightest star in Canis Major). Canis Major itself appears in full at the bottom of the frame. Canis Major and Minor are depicted in mythology as Orion’s two Hunting Dogs .
The northern winter Milky Way runs from top to bottom of the frame, punctuated by patches of red nebulosity such as the circular Rosette Nebula above centre. Orion is wreathed in the sweeping arc of Barnard’s Loop, while his Belt and Sword contain the Horsehead Nebula and Orion Nebula.
While we are looking to the outer edge of our Galaxy in this view, this region of the Milky Way is one of the richest areas of star formation in the sky. It’s a wonderful field and lovely to shoot under civilized conditions in southern New Mexico, at the idyllic Painted Pony Resort.
For this mosaic, I shot 4 to 5 frames for each of the two mosaic segments, plus two s for each segment shot through a diffusion filter to add in the accentuated star glows. I stacked and stitched all of them using Photoshop CC.
So a total of 13 exposures went into the mosaic, each 4 minutes long, shot with the 35mm lens and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII, which helps bring out the red nebulosity.