The nearby stars

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 395 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0038-6308
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00190627

✦ Synopsis

Before turning to the nearest stars, we shall first make another survey. From the observational point of view the very brightest stars offer obvious advantages. However, apparent brightness is not a good criteron of distance (Chapter 3). Tl~ae, on the average the apparently brighter stars are nearer, but it is hopeless even to make a guess at the distance of individual stars on the basis of brightness alone. The reason is the tremendous range in stellar luminosities, illustrated by the limited sample of the brightest twenty-one stars, not including our Sun, arranged in order of their apparent visual brightness (Table .1). These stars are found in different parts of the sky. Several objects are double, multiple, faint companion stars have been ignored; Capella and Alpha Crucis are blended.