Summary
Sirius, the brightest star in early spring's evening sky, is also the closest star visible to the unaided eye. That is one of two reasons why it is so bright. The other is that it is intrinsically very luminous, about 25 times more so than the sun.
Our parent star is not often considered to be intrinsically bright. Except for a handful, the stars visible in the April sky are all more luminous than the sun, with most of them being far brighter. We see them simply because their extreme luminosities easily compensate for their very great distances. But if they all were only as luminous as the sun, our sky would be dotted with less than 20 stars and many of those would appear near the edge of visibility.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Brightest Star Is Not the Closest
Using very sensitive and very sophisticated instruments, astronomers in the past 30 years have compiled what they believe is an accu...
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