Tuesday's List: The First-Magnitude Stars in Order of Brilliance

Way, way back in late 1960 I had just turned four and lived in a small apartment with my parents and sister in Opa-Locka, Florida...a little town just northwest of Miami with a strange penchant for Arabian architecture and street names.  My father worked close by at the Opa-Locka post office as a letter carrier and wanted to move us into a house...so the hunt began.  My parents apparently decided at the outset that our new neighborhood would be a commute a few miles away from Opa-Locka and so we ventured north into southern Broward County to look for a suitable house.  Had they instead gone south of Miami for a new home, I might well have been able to claim to have seen every star on the following list of all twenty-three of the first-magnitude (i.e., the very brightest) stars.  In West Hollywood, where we ended up moving, the latitude was just north enough that, combined with the city lights of Miami and obstructions on the horizon, I could never observe the brilliant southern hemisphere constellations of Centaurus and Crux that cross the meridian in the evening during mid-spring.  But south of Miami, the latitude would have raised them in the southern sky and the city lights would have been less of an interference, leading to a better shot at catching them from time to time.  As it is now, I live some four degrees further north in Gainesville, so forget it from where I am...I just have to get off my butt and travel to a more southern location (with clear skies) to finally get a look at these bright stars.  Crux, also known as the Southern Cross, has two first-magnitude stars and is situated in the sky right next to Centaurus' Hadar (also known as Beta Centauri) and Alpha Centauri.  Alpha Centauri is actually a three-star system, composed of Alpha Centauri A, slightly larger than our sun, Alpha Centauri B, slightly smaller...and Proxima Centauri, much smaller and distant from the other two as well as being the closest star to us besides the sun.  Alpha Centauri A and B are each bright stars in their own right, but are indistinguishable to the naked eye because of their proximity to each other...

Here's my list of the twenty-three brightest stars from the vantage point of Earth.  Their constellations are given in parentheses (our sun naturally traverses the Zodiac over the course of each year) and the numbers are their distances from us in light-years.  In the not-to-distant future I'll examine the nearest stars.  The distances I picked up from Wikipedia...I've noticed that some of them tend to vary from source to source...

1 THE SUN (The Zodiac)..................(.000016)
2 SIRIUS (Canis Major)...........................8.61
3 CANOPUS (Carina).............................312
4 ARCTURUS (Bootes)..........................36.7
5 ALPHA CENTAURI A (Centaurus).....4.40
6 VEGA (Lyra)........................................25.3
7 CAPELLA (Auriga)..............................42.2
8 RIGEL (Orion)......................................773
9 PROCYON (Canis Minor)....................11.4
10 ACHERNAR (Eridanus).....................144
11 BETELGEUSE (Orion).......................427
12 HADAR (Centaurus)...........................525
13 ALTAIR (Aquila)................................16.8
14 ACRUX (Crux)....................................321
15 ALDEBERAN (Taurus).......................65.1
16 SPICA (Virgo).....................................262
17 ANTARES (Scorpius).........................604
18 POLLUX (Gemini)..............................33.7
19 FOMALHAUT (Piscis Austrinis)........25.1
20 BECRUX (Crux)..................................353
21 DENEB (Cygnus).................................3229
22 ALPHA CENTAURI B (Centaurus)....4.40
23 REGULUS (Leo)..................................77.5