How many astronomy facts are there for all the objects and phenomenon in the entire universe? Consider that there are somewhere around 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe, that’s a one followed by 22 zeros. Think about this, there are planets orbiting many of those stars. Then consider all the moons that orbit the planets, the comets and asteroids, the galaxies these stars form, the nebulae and black holes and everything else out there. The number of facts and amount of data is staggering. This article, which presents astronomy facts, certainly won’t contain every astronomy fact. But these are interesting facts.

Let’s take a look at this subset of astronomy facts – the brightest stars as seen from Earth. That’s discounting the Sun which is about 250,000 times closer than the next nearest star. It’s so bright as seen from Earth that it washes out all the other stars in the sky during a phenomenon called “daylight”. For the purposes of this discussion, lower numbers for brightness mean a brighter star. The sun would be about -26.73, while the full moon is -12.6. With that in mind, here are the top 5.

#5 is Vega, which means eagle or vulture in Arabic. It’s about 25 light years away from the Earth, with a magnitude of .03. Just because a star looks brighter from Earth doesn’t mean it’s really brighter. Our sun, for example, appears brighter than any other star, even though it’s not one of the brightest in the universe.  That’s because it’s so close.

#4 is Rigel Kentaurus, that’s Arabic for foot of the centaur. It’s about four light years from Earth with a magnitude of -.01.

At #3, remember this is set in stone as one of the many astronomy facts we have, is Arcturus. The name means guardian of the bear in Greek. It’s 37 light-years distant from our home on Earth.

Canopus sits at number two. Of these top five Canopus, a Greek name for the pilot of the vessel Argo made famous in the stories about Jason and the Argonauts, is the brightest. But it’s 313 light years from Earth so it’s just second on this list as seen from Earth. -.62 is its magnitude is seen from the planet Earth.

#1 is the Greek word for scorching, Sirius. Sirius is also known as the Dog Star because it’s the brightest star in the constellation of Big Dog. Only 9 light-years separate Sirius and the earth, that’s the second nearest in this top five list. At -1.44 magnitude it’s the brightest star we can see from Earth.

This information doesn’t even scratch the surface of astronomy facts. But it’s something to consider next time you look into the sky.