Sun
The closest thing the Sun has to a North polar star is HD 176668, a faint (magnitude 6.50) star in the constellation Draco. It is about 2.3 degrees off the Sun's polar axis. A better choice for putative Sun dwellers, assuming they could see the sky, would be δ Draconis, which is much brighter (magnitude 3.07; it is the fourth brightest star in that constellation) although 4.3 degrees off. The Sun's South polar star turns out to be 34 Carinae, also a faint (magnitude 6.03) star, 2.2 degrees off, with the bright star α Pictoris (magnitude 3.24), 4.1 degrees away, as competing choice.
Read more about this topic: Extraterrestrial Skies
Famous quotes containing the word sun:
“If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“My face is muffled in my mother’s clothing. Her rhinestones injure me. See: my feet are going. Fish flee the forefinger of my aunt. The sun streams over the geraniums. What has this to do with what I feel, with what I am.”
—William Gass (b. 1924)