It is now mid-winter and a good time to enjoy the two brightest stars in the sky, Sirius and Canopus.
They will be directly south around 9:30 p.m. Sirius is the brightest star. Its name means “searing” or “scorching” in Greek. It is in Canis Major, the Greater Dog which follows Orion the Hunter in the sky as one of his companions.
Sirius appears so bright, because it is “only” 8.6 light years away, one of the closest stars to the sun. However, it is no stellar wimp being 26 times brighter than the sun.
It also has a small companion star, Sirius B which is a white dwarf star, a compact hot star, and the dying remnant of a formerly larger star now slowly cooling off.
Canopus is not quite as bright as Sirius and is low in the sky. Look just above the southern horizon and slightly to the west of Sirius to see Canopus, the second brightest star.
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It is so bright, I can easily see it from my living room which overlooks the lights of Tucson to the south. Due to its southern location, Canopus is not visible from Canada and most of the continental United States.
Canopus is a supergiant star 313 light years away and 15,000 times brighter than the sun with a diameter 65 times that of the sun. Its intense nuclear fires produce enough light for it to be a dominant star in the southern hemisphere.
