A disappearing plane and a disease's sudden spread. Legalizations, celebrations â and the inexplicable attraction of a dumped bucket of ice water. These are some of the stories that dominated 2014. Now we want your choices.
The brightest star, as viewed from Earth, is Sirius, and it appears bluish-white to the human eye. It is classified as an A1Vm star and shares the color spectrum with other class-A stars.
Both are blue class B (B1 and B4) hydrogen-fusing dwarfs (the brighter nearing the end of its stable lifetime), making Spica one of the hottest of the first magnitude stars. The high temperature produces a great deal of radiation in the ultraviolet, which renders Spica vastly brighter than visually indicated.