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.
A star's brightness is known as its magnitude. Astronomers rate the magnitude of a star with a scale that gives brighter stars a low number and dim stars a higher number. Each whole number on this scale is 2.5 times dimmer than the previous number. The brightest star the night sky is Sirius. With a magnitude of -1.46, it is almost 15 times brighter than a star with a magnitude of zero. Stars with a magnitude of 8 or more are too dim to see with the naked eye. Stars are identified by their color, which indicates their temperature.