Beta Centauri

The photograph, shared by the space agency on May 18, shows more than 200,000 stars shining in the southern constellation Centaurus including one of the brightest stars in the night sky, Beta Centauri, in the lower left.

On Monday, December 02, Australian amateur astronomer John Seach (Chatsworth Island, NSW) discovered a nova in Centaurus, not far from beta Centauri.

The Southern Cross, Alpha and Beta Centauri and Antares (meaning rival of Mars) were especially important for traditional Arab navigators, so it is good to have night such as this when those stars are unobscured by clouds.a€Y

* Robert Innes in 1915 at the Union Observatory found a faint third star associated with the stars alpha and beta Centauri. He declared it to be the nearest star to the solar system and called it Proxima Centauri.

If you a draw a line from Alpha Hydri to Beta Centauri, it is neatly bisected by the south celestial pole.

This panorama, captured near Christchurch, New Zealand, shows Alpha and Beta Centauri (the bright pair on the Milky Way's band at lower left), the Southern Cross and Coalsack (left of center), the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (below center), Canopus (right of center), and Sirius (upper right).

(below, right) Two of the many intrigued children who came back to look several times at Saturn and Beta Centauri. For almost all the visitors, it was their first experience of observing through a telescope.

For now they are the closest pairing of 1st-magnitude stars in the night sky, just edging out nearby Alpha and Beta Centauri (the Pointers to the Southern Cross).