POLARIS
Polaris, the North Star, is a single point in the night sky which the entire consortium of stars appears to revolve around. Despite being one of the most well-known stars in the sky, Polaris continues to confuse scientists. We still don’t know for sure how old the star is, or even exactly how far away it is from Earth.
The yellow supergiant is a Cepheid variable star, which means its brightness fluctuates by less than a tenth of a magnitude every few days. A common misconception is that Polaris is the brightest star in the sky, but this position is actually held by Sirius, with Polaris only ranking 48th in terms of luminosity.
Since Polaris isn’t incredibly bright or visible to us, how has it been our famous guiding star, escorting travellers for centuries? The answer is
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