● Rigil Kentaurus

  Rigil Kentaurus is a star in Centaurus.

                                               
                                               
                                               
                                               
                      #####                    
                   ###########                 
                 ###############               
                #################              
                #################              
                #################              
                 ###############               
                   ###########                 
                      #####                    
                                               
                                               
                                               
                                               

  Type            Yellow main-sequence star
  Constellation   Centaurus
  Magnitude       -0.0
  Spectral type   G2V
  Distance        4 light years
  Double star     components 20.9″ apart
  You need        naked eye

  Known as
  Bayer           α¹ Cen
  Yale            HR 5459

  More information about Rigil Kentaurus

  Rigil Kentaurus is the brightest of the three stars that make up the
  closest system to our own, 4.4 light years away, and it is very nearly a
  twin of the Sun in size, colour and temperature. Almost any telescope
  splits it into two stars orbiting each other over eighty years. The
  third, Proxima Centauri, is a small red star that is closer still and
  far too faint to see without a telescope, and it has a planet in the
  zone where liquid water could exist. The name is the Arabic Rijl
  Qanturis رجل قنطورس, "the foot of the centaur", built on the same word
  as Rigel. With Hadar it forms The Pointers, which aim at the Southern
  Cross.

  Bayer lettered the stars of each constellation in his Uranometria of
  1603, in order of brightness. He was working from Tycho's magnitudes by
  eye, and the order he recorded is often wrong.

  First published in 1930 by Yale astronomer Frank Schlesinger, and
  maintained since, the Yale Bright Star Catalogue lists every star down
  to magnitude 6.5. It contains 9,110 stars.

  where it is tonight:  skymap.sh/Rigil Kentaurus