Sirius B
node · earth · Constellation Canis Major, as seen from Earth
The companion of Sirius A and the first white dwarf ever observed, seen by Alvan Graham Clark on 31 January 1862 while testing a new 18.5-inch refractor. Its existence had been inferred earlier from the wobble of Sirius A. Its significance is that it forced the physics: a star of roughly one solar mass packed into a body about the size of the Earth, with an effective temperature near 25,000 K, implies a density that no classical model of matter could explain, and the resolution - electron degeneracy - arrived only with quantum mechanics in the 1920s. It is the concrete object behind an abstract limit, and it is bright enough and close enough that its mass and radius are among the best-measured of any white dwarf. Not a place on Earth.
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Evidence · 2
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 1
- White dwarfinstance_of
Assembled narrative · 1
An assembled narrative is available for this object.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
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