Canopus | |||||||||||||||
Canopus (Alpha Carinae) is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina, and the second brightest star in the sky, with a visual magnitude of -0.62 it is second only to Sirius.
It is a yellowish-white supergiant star of a rare spectral type F, since most supergiants are either blue or red. Canopus islocated 310 ly which makes it about 20,000 times brighter than the Sun and the most intrinsically bright star within about 700 ly. It is in reality much more luminous than Sirius, which is only a mere 22 times more luminous than our sun, and depends on being much closer to us to beat Canopus in apparent magnitude. | |||||||||||||||
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