Facts about Sirius B
- 08
In 1995, observations from the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that Sirius B possesses a companion brown dwarf, making this binary system actually a triple star system.
- 07
The radius of Sirius B measures only 5,800 miles across, smaller than Earth despite containing 1.02 times the Sun's mass.
- 06
Approximately 8,600 years ago, Sirius B began its white dwarf phase after exhausting its nuclear fuel, meaning the star we observe today has been cooling for longer than human civilization has existed.
- 05
Light from Sirius B takes roughly 8.6 years to reach Earth, meaning we observe this white dwarf as it appeared in 2016 when viewing it today in 2024.
- 04
A white dwarf stellar remnant, Sirius B will eventually cool over trillions of years to become a black dwarf, an object so cold it emits no detectable radiation.
- 03
Discovered in 1862 by Alvan Graham Clark, Sirius B orbits its companion star Sirius A every 50.1 years at an average distance of 20 astronomical units.
- 02
Sirius B's surface temperature reaches approximately 25,200 Kelvin, making it roughly four times hotter than our Sun's surface.
- 01
With a mass of 1.02 solar masses compressed into an Earth-sized volume, Sirius B possesses a density of approximately one million times that of the Sun.