Can you name the brightest stars in the night sky? - sporcle

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Can you name the brightest stars in the night sky? Enter a star in the box below Correctly named stars will show up in the table below Answers do not have to be guessed in order This game was contributed by Sporcle user: davidr Source: Hipparcos catalogue via Atlas of the Universe You have 6 minutes to guess after you click the button below.	Search: Popular trivia games today 4 Letter Capitals 6211 Broadway Opening Lines 4108 TV Shows (U.S.) 4055 You Do Know Jack 1689 Lousy descriptions of Tom Hanks movies 1661 Same Last Name 1371 And more...
Ready? Click to Start Enter star: 0/15 stars correct	Time remaining:

Rank	Star	Constellation
1.		Canis Major
2.		Carina
3.		Centaurus
4.		Boötes
5.		Lyra
6.		Auriga
7.		Orion
8.		Canis Minor

Rank	Star	Constellation
9.		Eridanus
10.		Orion
11.		Centaurus
12.		Aquila
13.		Crux
14.		Taurus
15.		Scorpius

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There are 28 comments for this game.
(Warning: comments may contain spoilers)

	HollywoodLeo:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 21:16 GMT	15 points
	lol, nice bonus answer for "Sun"

	albagobragh:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 21:29 GMT	-3 points
	Betelgeuse is that where the Vogons were from, or was that Ford Prefect? My knowledge of Star Trek should have served me better.

	davidr:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 21:36 GMT	4 points
	@redalert: Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox. The Vogons come from a planet called Vogsphere but I don't think the star's name is ever mentioned.

	Luke:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 21:51 GMT	5 points
	Wow - i didn't have a scooby on that one. My astronomy knowledge is evidently very limited.

	Tim_Allen:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 21:53 GMT	6 points
	I got three, thanks to a satellite radio company, a character in Pulp Fiction and a movie starring Michael Keaton. :)

	kwelly15:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 21:54 GMT	9 points
	I have to admit, I got number 7 from Kang and Kodos.

	paoletti:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 22:29 GMT	7 points
	Betelgeuse,Betelgeuse,Betelgeuse!

	tcalleen:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 22:35 GMT	6 points
	Why does alpha centauri work, but beta centauri, alpha bootis, alpha aquilae, etc. doesn't work? I like the quiz, but I'm curious about the inconsistency.

	davidr:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 22:45 GMT	1 point
	Allowing the Beyer designation for all the stars would make the quiz trivial to anyone who spotted the pattern (especially since the brightest star in most constellations is designated alpha). However, I think that Alpha Centauri is much better known than that name that as Rigil Kentaurus, so I added that one as an alternative. Perhaps Beta Centauri should be accepted, as well?

	Antithesys:	Jan 7th, 2009 at 23:10 GMT	10 points
	Beta Centauri should probably count. Technically all the Beyer names should count but like you said it would make this a Latin quiz and not an astronomy quiz.

	tcalleen:	Jan 8th, 2009 at 00:28 GMT	3 points
	@davidr: That makes sense - thanks for the explanation. I agree that Beta Centauri should probably count, though.

	PresidentJSC:	Jan 8th, 2009 at 00:34 GMT	2 points
	Can you accept betelgeux, which is an alternative version of the spelling...

	Justin:	Jan 8th, 2009 at 02:20 GMT	3 points
	I got one and it was only a bonus answer.

	doorholder:	Jan 8th, 2009 at 03:18 GMT	5 points
	Great quiz for the start of the International Year of Astronomy. I got 10...not nearly what I should get since I've been studying astronomy for almost four years in college. If they did the Beyer names it would be a tad too easy. Just run through alpha, beta, gamma, delta...by then you'd have gotten it since they're named based on when they're discovered or placed in that system (hence Alpha Orionis is Betelgeuse, not Rigel even though Rigel is brighter). The Arabic, Greek, and Latin based names are much more interesting.

	davidr:	Jan 8th, 2009 at 03:45 GMT	1 point
	@doorholder: laugh What a happy co-incidence! This was just something I thought of in the shower the other morning: I had no idea it was the International Year of Astronomy. It turns out that all the stars in this quiz are are Alpha &mdash, except for Betas Orionis and Centauri.

	TheBluesMan:	Jan 8th, 2009 at 04:16 GMT	3 points
	If you were paying attention during Star Trek, you would have gotten: Aldebaran because of their green whiskey and Altair from the original series episode "Amok Time."

	chrismet:	Jan 10th, 2009 at 12:06 GMT	3 points
	Some of the entries are in fact a system of several stars (for example Rigil Kentaurus is a system containing 4 stars) and the source for this quiz uses the combined magnitude of all the stars in a particular system. If you just took into account the magnitude of the main star the list would be Sirius, Canopus, Arcturus, Rigil Kentaurus, Vega, Rigel, Procyon, Archernar, Betelgeuse, Hadar, Capella A, Altair, Aldebaran, Capella B and Spica.

	davidr:	Jan 10th, 2009 at 16:40 GMT	1 point
	@Chris: Yes, some of these are star systems rather than single stars &mdash thanks for making that clear. I quoted the brightness of the system because that's what you see when you look at the sky.

Rank	Star	Constellation
9.		Eridanus
10.		Orion
11.		Centaurus
12.		Aquila
13.		Crux
14.		Taurus
15.		Scorpius

	davidr:	Jan 11th, 2009 at 14:41 GMT	1 point
	@Joe Ball: None of these systems can be resolved by eye and I'm not sure they can all be resoved directly even with large telescopes. The usual techniques, I believe, are to look for stars wobbling and changes in brightness as the components pass in front of one another or to look for the system wobbling about its centre of mass — less precise versions of the same techniques that are used today to detect extrasolar planets. It seems that most stars are, actually, parts of star systems rather than single stars. On this list, numbers 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15 (nine out of fifteen) are star systems, though most of them consist of a single bright star with one or more smaller, much dimmer companions.

	jkd:	Jan 12th, 2009 at 21:33 GMT	0 points
	The sun is permitted as a bonus answer? I don't think it appears in the "night sky" ...

	davidr:	Jan 13th, 2009 at 03:51 GMT	1 point
	@jkd: Did you read what it writes when you type `sun'?

	TIMTEBOW15:	May 4th, 2009 at 03:03 GMT	0 points
	@davidr u are such a freakin nerd, you have made 1/2 of the comments on the quiz

	OSUAero:	May 13th, 2009 at 23:23 GMT	1 point
	Technically you see the reflection of the sun off of the moon at night, so you do see the sun in a way.

	GeoExpert:	May 23rd, 2009 at 07:22 GMT	1 point
	The Sun is the brightest star in the sky, but not in the night sky. The quiz clearly says "Night Sky." This is relative brightness as well, not actual brightness.

	WCRoentgen:	Jun 4th, 2009 at 04:35 GMT	1 point
	Where does Polaris fit in the scale of relative brightness?

	davidr:	Jul 9th, 2009 at 11:54 GMT	1 point
	@OSUAero: That's hardly `seeing the sun' — the reflection is incredibly diffuse and no image of the sun is formed. It's no more seeing the sun than looking at your hand in an artificially lit room is `seeing a light bulb'.

	davidr:	Jul 9th, 2009 at 12:32 GMT	1 point
	@WCRoentgen: 48th. Use the source, Luke!