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14KL t1_j6cwos2 wrote

I don’t know if it still exists or not, but there was old open-source planetarium software, called Celestia I believe, that let you play around with this. For example, on a planet around Alpha Centauri, the Sun would appear as a sixth bright star in Cassiopeia, making the “W” look more like a zig-zag.

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TheZigRat t1_j6cwtek wrote

It is. From home it is part of the Spider Crab constellation

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internetboyfriend666 t1_j6cxd8o wrote

It's certainly possible. Our sun would be visible to the (human) naked eye out to at least a few dozen light years, so depending on how those alien's eyes worked, they could potentially see our sun as part of a constellation.

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Waddensky t1_j6cz3ub wrote

Constellations are a human invention, but yes, the Sun would appear in the night sky just like any other star as seen from an exoplanet, provided it's close enough to be seen with the naked eye.

From a planet orbiting one of the stars of Alpha Centauri, the Sun is close to the bright stars of Cassiopeia. From Barnard's Star, the Sun aligns nicely with the belt of Orion.

Here are a few more, including charts! https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/explore-night-bob-king/see-the-sun-from-other-stars/

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uranusisenormous t1_j6d1gfb wrote

Replying to internetboyfriend666 (#1,579,062)

Good way of putting it. The sun is def visible to other planets. But a constellation is an abstract concept that almost certainly requires some kind of intelligence. I don’t think dogs look at the stars and see archers or lions or bears. And even if they did, they’d have no language to pass that info down through the generations.

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ferrel_hadley t1_j6d2dxq wrote

The Sun is about brighter than a full Moon from Pluto. But hypothetically our Sun would appear as a super bright star from within the Solar System. Comets and the other planets would not be visible to human eyes. Though its slow 248 year movement across the sky would make it not fit in as a constellation.

But as you push deeper out while still part of the solar system that movement would become less and less obvious.

This is theoretical and does not answer your question directly but from a theoretical planet in the outer solarsystem then yes the Sun would be part of constellation to any civilisation only lasting a couple of hundred years.

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VertigoOne1 t1_j6da1oh wrote

I remember reading somewhere that the sun is not even the brightest star in the sky when you get out to the oort cloud, but certainly it would be visible, but we tend to make constellations with bright stars, so probably not very far off. A quick google, maybe about 60 lightyears or so and it would be barely visible, but 0-40’s it might be in a constellation.

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PerryODonnel t1_j6dg6rz wrote

If a sun falls in the constellation and nobody is there to see it, does it even make a point?

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bigloser42 t1_j6dk1vf wrote

It’s a bad time to ask that question, Sol is in retrograde.

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Varsect t1_j6dn8tr wrote

Depending on the view point from another distant world, the Sun would either be in the constellation Capricornus or if it's from an Alpha Centauri world, Cassiopeia's outcast regions.

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Ok-Wrongdoer-9647 t1_j6dslrd wrote

Replying to daveinmd13 (#1,584,149)

Depends on the size of their pupil and sensitivity of their eye equivalent features.. if they have a telescope then 5 billion light years because that’s how old the sun is… if their pupils were massive I believe they could technically see it with the naked eye but it would be incredibly tiny.. they just need to capture enough light from the source to be visible

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VertigoOne1 t1_j6dtgn8 wrote

Replying to redstercoolpanda (#1,583,409)

Because our sun is a dwarf star, it is actually very puny. The only reason it is so bright is because it is so close, Sirius is 9 lightyears away and is 25 times more luminous, and absolute magnitude of 1.45, the sun is 4.85. Canopus is 300lj away, is the second brightest star in the sky. Our sun is very lightweight. If you put canopus at the distance of Sirius it would be brighter than the moon.

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Outrageous_Fall_9568 t1_j6du3i1 wrote

Have we been to the other side of the sun? I don’t hear anything about it to my knowledge of nothingness

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WhatUpBigUp t1_j6dukte wrote

Quite possible our sun could be the business end of the Plumbus constellation

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Norwester77 t1_j6dur0k wrote

I remember once reading that, viewed from Alpha Centauri, we would be a little extra “zag” at the bottom end of Cassiopeia.

Kinda puts things into perspective.

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citybadger t1_j6ebeq3 wrote

Replying to VertigoOne1 (#1,584,676)

The Sun is below the average but above the median brightness, because so many stars are red dwarfs.

The population is stars is like rocks on a beach. Most are grains of sand. Then there are pebbles of various sizes. And then there are a few rocks and even giant boulders.

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Waddensky t1_j6eevak wrote

Replying to daveinmd13 (#1,584,149)

The Sun has an absolute magnitude of 4.8. The (human) naked-eye limiting magnitude is 6.5. The Sun would be visible to the naked eye up to a distance of around 70 light-years.

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Tom__mm t1_j6ef2o4 wrote

Sun is small and would be pretty faint from just a few light years away, but it’s possible.

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Norwester77 t1_j6emowu wrote

Replying to citybadger (#1,587,816)

Plus, the sun rotates on its axis about once a month (the actual rotation rate varies depending on the latitude, which is possible because the sun isn’t rigid), so we get a regular look at every part of its surface.

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Textipulator t1_j6er2we wrote

Our sun IS factually part of a constellation, the real question is, is it part of one, named by aliens.

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coleisman t1_j6erqqz wrote

not likely to be. our star isn’t particularly bright as stars go, most of the stars in our constellations are tens to thousands of times more luminous than our sun.

even if visible it wouldn’t stand out at all and wouldn’t likely be in a constellation unless they were at alpha centauri.

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cantwejustbefiends t1_j6fgd41 wrote

Replying to VertigoOne1 (#1,584,676)

This is more a testament to how large the Oort Cloud is since the sun is pretty average. Sirius is 25x the brightness of our sun, but the edge of the Oort Cloud is 200,000x farther from the sun than Earth is (Pluto and the Kaiper Belt are only 40x and 50x). If Earth was at the edge of the cloud, Sirius would be only 3x farther then the sun; so at 25x brighter it would be brighter. But within a 20 ly distance our sun is one of the brightest, and of the 130 closest stars our sun is actually the 7th brightest.

The Oort Cloud reaches out 3 ly, and for comparison our closest neighboring system, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 ly. If you were at the edge of the Oort Cloud, our sun would be the 5th closest star to you.

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MikeLinPA t1_j6fh1qt wrote

Really, any small group of bright enough stars can be imagined into constellations. The little dipper could be seen as the toilet of the gods in someone's mind. This means that Sol could very well be part of the septic system constellation from some other point of view.

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staplebench t1_j6fjoiz wrote

Is Stellarium-like software powerful enough to show stars in the sky from other planets? Can we get a head start on prehistoric religion?

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dumdodo t1_j6g04is wrote

Replying to jdubbrude (#1,594,701)

The Orion Nebula, one of the "stars" in the constellation Orion, is 1400 light years away.

Different types of stars have different magnitudes, and can be visible at different distances, as do other objects, like nebulas.

And yes, with a telescope, you can see numerous additional stars. The Milky Way becomes a boring group of stars when viewed through a telescope, because they are no longer tightly packed.

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Bedrockab t1_j6g75ra wrote

Alien eyes might be REALLY good and see much better than a human eye…

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pyrosthenes t1_j6gaozf wrote

They'd have to be close. The sun just isn't bright enough to be seen from thousands of light-years away.

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Niven42 t1_j6gb84p wrote

The Sun's absolute magnitude (how bright it would appear at a distance of 10 parsecs), is about +4.83, which means that out to around 30 light years, it appears as a fifth magnitude star or brighter. Although there are many factors to how bright stars appear while observing from Earth, the classic constellations were limited to around fifth magnitude, or brighter (magnitude is an inverse scale; smaller numbers are brighter). So, for at least all systems out to around 10-12 parsecs, the Sun is bright enough to be included in their constellations (if they used the same criteria as our ancients did when creating star groupings).

Here is a chart of around 130 star systems where the Sun would be likely to appear as a significant constellation star.

http://www.icc.dur.ac.uk/~tt/Lectures/Galaxies/LocalGroup/Back/50lys.html

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MikeTheGamer2 t1_j6gnnzn wrote

I knew we shouldn't have come to this backwaterplanet and let you drink that "moonshine" or whatever they called it. No part of their moon is in it and it certainly doesn't shine.

We haven't been able to convince you that you AREN'T human. Even their so called "doctors" are fooled because they rely on machines to diagnosis problems, instead of their &@#$^^% @#$%0. They keep thinking you are human because it looks like that on their machines. They can;t see beyiond the !****#. I knew their language devices wouldn't pick those up.

Hah. These low tech "monkies" will never get off this rock at this rate.

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BOBauthor t1_j6grjgn wrote

If observers in the alpha Centauri system looked at our Sun, they would see a star of apparent magnitude 0.5, which is very bright. The Sun would be in the constellation Cassiopeia, and could be considered as an extension of it. (Cassiopeia itself wouldn't appear much different.) Here's a Sky & Telescope article about this.

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Norwester77 t1_j6h0fq6 wrote

Replying to smilingpike31 (#1,605,446)

It does radiate energy in all directions, but the material in the sun is rotating, so it necessarily has an axis of rotation. The rotation has other effects, like twisting the sun’s magnetic field into a spiral.

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jdubbrude t1_j6iwqm4 wrote

Replying to dumdodo (#1,598,663)

I think it’s crazy that here on earth I could be dead buried for 70 million years but someone on another planet can see our planter as it is today. As if I’m still alive. Pretty wild

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