Canopus is the second brightest star in the night sky, named after the pilot of a ship in a Trojan legend. It has a high absolute luminosity and is a yellowish-white F-class supergiant star located in the constellation Carina. Before the launch of Hipparcos, its distance was uncertain. Canopus was used for southward navigation and is not visible from locations north of Kentucky.
Canopus is the second brightest star in the night sky, after Sirius. The origin of its name is ancient and very little known. It may be named after the pilot of a ship in a Trojan legend, as it is the brightest star in the now obsolete constellation Argo Navis, which represented the ship piloted by the Argonauts. Canopus is located in the constellation Carina, the keel, used to refer to the part of the “giant ship” of which it was considered a part.
Canopus has a very high absolute luminosity and is the second brightest star despite its distance of 310 light years. Sirius, the brightest star, is only 8.3 light-years away. If Canopus were where Sirius is today, it would be many times brighter and by far the brightest star in the sky.
Canopus is a yellowish-white F-class supergiant star. Situated well in the southern hemisphere, Canopus is not visible from locations north of Kentucky. It has a luminosity about 13,600 times greater than the Sun and a diameter of 130 solar radii, almost a third of the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
Before the launch of the high-precision distance-measuring satellite Hipparcos, Canopus’s distance was uncertain to astronomers, who estimated it to be about 90 light-years or 1300 light-years from Earth. Had that been the case, Canopus would have turned out to have the highest absolute luminosity of any star in the Galaxy. Eta Carinae, a star it is close to in the sky, is in fact one of the brightest stars in the Galaxy in terms of absolute luminosity. Another contender is LBV 1806-20, located on the opposite side of the galactic core from us.
Before the widespread distribution of compasses, Canopus was used by peoples of the northern hemisphere as a star for southward navigation. Unlike the brightest star in the sky Sirius, Canopus is located well away from the plane of the elliptical.
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