this is one of my HW problems in Astronomy class.
I need calculation to write..
Please help..
Thank You !!
2007-10-31 03:12:36 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
8.6 light years approx.
2007-10-31 03:20:05 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Also known as Alpha Canis Majoris, Sirius is the fifth closest system to Sol, at 8.6 light-years (ly) away. It is located in the north central part (06:45:08.92-16:42:58.02, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Canis Major, the Larger Dog. Sirius is also the lower left member of the "Winter Triangle" of first magnitude stars, whose other components are Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris) at upper left and Betegeuse (Alpha Orionis) at right center. A binary, the system is the title member of the Sirius stellar moving group (also know as the Sirius Super Clusteror Ursa Major star stream), which include all five stars of the Great Dipper as well as Gemma and are mostly around 490 million years old and all moving towards the galactic center. Athough Ejnar Hertzsprung (1873-1967) claimed that Sirius was a likely member of the Ursa Major moving group as early as 1909, a 2003 study of possible moving group members using HIPPARCOS' parallax data led by Jeremy King was not able to confirm the system's membership (Ken Croswell, Astronomy.com, March 2005), and the Sirius system appears to be too young, only about half the apparent age of the Ursa Major star stream (Liebert et al, 2005; and Ken Croswell, 2005). (See Akira Fujii's color photo of Sirius -- at the top center of photo.)
Sirius is composed of a main-sequence star and a white dwarf stellar remnant. They form a close binary, Alpha Canis Majoris A and B, that is separated "on average" by only about 20 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun -- 19.8 astronomical units (AUs) of an orbital semi-major axis -- which is about the same as the distance between Uranus and our Sun ("Sol").
2007-10-31 10:22:49 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Take the reciprocal of the parallax (that is, 1 / .377). That's the distance to the star in parsecs, which is the unit that professional astronomers use (as opposed to light-years).
2007-10-31 12:44:35 · answer #3 · answered by clitt1234 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
ABOUT FOUR AND ONE HALF LIGHT YEARS
2007-10-31 12:08:49 · answer #4 · answered by Loren S 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋