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.
It should be obvious that the sun should top the list. Using the scale as defined above, the sun has an apparent magnitude of -26.7. The full moon is about -11, the planet Venus (at its brightest) is about -5. The brightest star is Sirius (actually Sirius A because it has a companion, Sirius B) is listed at -1.46. The very best telescopes are able to observe visually to about +30 to +36 on this scale.