When You Wish Upon a Star... Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sirius

Though all these stars have bright apparent magnitudes, (how bright a star looks from Earth) you'll find that the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere's night sky is Sirius. More specifically, it's Sirius A, as opposed to the other star in its binary system, Sirius B. By located the constellation Orion, you can follow the three stars that make up "Orion's Belt" to Sirius, the Dog Star.

This star is part of the constellation Canis Major, or the "Great Dog," hence its nickname.

Answer: Polaris

Almost directly over the Celestial Pole is Polaris, more commonly known as the North Star or the Pole Star. Its location over this pole takes you almost directly north when followed. To locate it year-round in the Northern Hemisphere, locate the Big Dipper (Plow). Find the two stars farthest away from its "handle." Follow these for about five times the distance between the two of them, and - behold! - the North Star and compass of the night sky, Polaris.

Answer: The Southern Cross

Making up the Southern Cross are the stars Gamma Crucis, Delta Crucis, Alpha Crucis and Beta Crucis. Only one star of the constellation Crux is left out of this asterism. The stars Alpha Crucis and Gamma Crucis are often used to point south. Just to add a bit of confusion, a nearby "False Cross" can be found very close to the Southern Cross, but only the Southern Cross contains the fifth star.

Answer: Aldebaran

Aldebaran, which is among the brightest stars in the sky, can be found in a way similar to that of Sirius. In fact, it is fairly simple to confuse the pair. Aldebaran is visible the opposite direction of Sirius. It is also part of Taurus and is said to "follow" the Pleiades star cluster, or "Seven Sisters." Its name literally means "the follower" in Arabic.

Answer: Venus

Venus has no definitive method to finding it, but remember: since it's closer to the Sun than Earth, it never appears to venture too far from the Sun. Try to find it just before sunrise or just before sunset. This way, many of the stars that you may think are Venus will not be present in the sky.

It is the brightest object in the sky after the Moon and the Sun, and if you think another body may be Venus, see if either twinkles- only stars appear to do this, not planets.

Answer: Castor

Castor and Pollux make up the "heads" of the twins of Gemini. Unusually, Castor, although designated as the Alpha star, is dimmer than Pollux, the Beta star. Castor belongs to a binary system. The two can be seen at the section of the constellation that joins the near-parallel lines protruding from it.

Answer: Proxima Centauri

Let's assume that the Centauri system is a trinary star system. The three stars that are allegedly involved are Alpha Centauri, Beta Centauri, and Proxima Centauri (Affinitus Centauri is a figment of my imagination). Together, these three stars make up the closest star system to Earth.

The three stars are each about 4 light years away. Proxima Centauri is about .15 light years closer. The two brighter stars are around the same size as the Sun and at times are very close to one another - about the distance between Saturn and the Sun.

But Proxima Centauri, which is extremely faint and not visible on Earth, is about 13,000 astronomical units away from the other two, thus bringing the speculation of whether or not it orbits the binary system.

Answer: Canopus

The second-brightest star in the sky is Canopus, which is visible just above the horizon in the north, but high in the sky in the south. Interestingly, this star is actually "dimmed" by the greater amount atmosphere one must look through in the northern hemisphere, and it's the southern hemisphere apparent magnitude that gives it its dubbing of "second brightest star in the sky." The northernmost areas you might see Canopus are Gibraltar, Los Angeles, and the areas along or south of there.

As always, scientists need to argue and be skeptics over where you can observe it - I guess that's what makes science fun.

Answer: Vega

Vega can be spotted in the constellation Lyra. It is a star of many observational firsts - it was the first star other than the Sun to be photographed and the first to be estimated in parallax measurements (which are the largest form of measurement - even bigger than light years!). Thousands of years ago, it actually served as the pole star.

In other words, it was Polaris's predecessor. It will once again be our pole star, someday, but not for a very long time. Vega may also have a planet orbiting it.

It has some debris orbiting around it, similarly to our solar system's Kuiper Belt. It is one very interesting star.

Answer: Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse (pronounced "beetle juice", or "bettle juice") may not even exist. It is so many light years away, it may have gone supernova already, and the light hasn't reached us yet. And if that doesn't scare you, this may: it's so massive, even from that distance it appears as one of the brightest stars in the sky. This famous star can be located as the left shoulder as Orion.