Heliocodex

Meet a star

Pick one and say hello

Every star you can see is a sun, with its own distance, colour and story. Every one the eye can see has a page here, 8,770 in all. Only 540 have been given a name. The rest go by a Greek letter, a number or their place in a catalogue. Start with the one whose light is as old as you are.

Your birthday star

Light takes time to cross space. Somewhere up there is a star whose light, arriving tonight, set off in the year you were born.

The brightest

The twenty brightest stars in the night sky, as seen from the Earth.

  1. SiriusCanis Major, 8.6 light years
  2. CanopusCarina, 310 light years
  3. ArcturusBoötes, 37 light years
  4. Rigil KentaurusCentaurus, 4.3 light years
  5. VegaLyra, 25 light years
  6. CapellaAuriga, 43 light years
  7. RigelOrion, 860 light years
  8. ProcyonCanis Minor, 11 light years
  9. BetelgeuseOrion, 550 light years
  10. AchernarEridanus, 140 light years
  11. HadarCentaurus, 390 light years
  12. AltairAquila, 17 light years
  13. AcruxCrux, 320 light years
  14. AldebaranTaurus, 67 light years
  15. SpicaVirgo, 250 light years
  16. AntaresScorpius, 550 light years
  17. PolluxGemini, 34 light years
  18. FomalhautPiscis Austrinus, 25 light years
  19. DenebCygnus, 1,400 light years
  20. MimosaCrux, 280 light years

The nearest

The closest stars that have names. Most are too faint to see without a telescope.

  1. Proxima Centauri4.2 light years
  2. Rigil Kentaurus4.3 light years
  3. Toliman4.3 light years
  4. Barnard's Star5.9 light years
  5. Wolf 3597.8 light years
  6. Lalande 211858.3 light years
  7. Sirius8.6 light years
  8. Ross 1549.7 light years
  9. Ross 24810 light years
  10. Ran10 light years
  11. Lacaille 935211 light years
  12. Ross 12811 light years

The ones with names

540 stars, in the order of the alphabet.

2

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Every star, by constellation

The sky is divided into 88 constellations, and every star belongs to one. Each list has all its stars that the eye can see.

Where this comes from

The stars and their measurements are from the HYG star database, version 4.4, by David Nash, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. The names are the ones approved by the International Astronomical Union, as that database lists them. To see which stars are up tonight, open the sky map.