Canopus in a sentence

Despite Canopus being vastly more luminous than Sirius, however, Sirius appears brighter than Canopus.

A consistent problem that plagued the spacecraft during the early portion of its mission was that roll error signal transients would occur frequently and on occasion would cause loss of the Canopus star lock.

Another bright source at a wide angle away from the Sun was needed and Canopus filled this requirement.

An unsuccessful attempt to add an extra day every fourth year was made in 238 BC ( Decree of Canopus ).

Budge (1894) p. 109 In addition to the inscriptions, there would probably have been a scene depicting the king being presented to the gods, topped with a winged disk, as on the Canopus Stele.

Engineers initially feared that the star-tracker could mistake the much brighter Venus for Canopus, repeating the mishaps with flaking paint.

If Canopus has not yet risen, the second magnitude Alpha Pavonis can also be used to form the triangle with Achernar and the pole.

Including Canopus, there were seven such objects visible to the sensor.

In other words, Canopus is halfway between Sirius and the pole.

Mariner 10 determined its attitude using two optical sensors, one pointed at the Sun, and the other at a bright star, usually Canopus; additionally, the probe's three gyroscopes provided a second option for calculating the attitude.

Sirius served as the body of a "Great Bird" constellation called Manu, with Canopus as the southern wingtip and Procyon the northern wingtip, which divided the Polynesian night sky into two hemispheres.

The Kalapalo people of Mato Grosso state in Brazil called Procyon and Canopus Kofongo "Duck", with Castor and Pollux representing his hands.

Then it will reach the stationary radial velocity (RVel) of 0.0 km/s and the maximum apparent magnitude of −0.86v (which is comparable to present-day magnitude of Canopus ).

There was no further loss of Canopus lock, although roll transients occurred 38 more times before encounter with Mars.

The star Canopus (the south polar star in Chinese astronomy) was located by Chinese astronomers in the The Vermillion Bird of the South (南方朱雀, Nán Fāng Zhū Què).

The star tracker was set to respond to any object more than one-eighth as, and less than eight times as bright as Canopus.

This is because Sirius is merely 8.6 light-years from the Earth, while Canopus is much farther away at a distance of 310 light-years.

This proximity is the main reason for its brightness, as with other near stars such as Alpha Centauri and in stark contrast to distant, highly luminous supergiants such as Canopus, Rigel or Betelgeuse.

This would cause a roll error transient as the object passed through the field-of-view while the sensor was locked onto Canopus.