Hubble Space Telescope spectrographic images of Sirius A and B have been studied by a team of astronomers lead by Martin Barstow from the University of Leicester, England. They have discovered new information on the brightest-looking star in our nighttime sky Sirius A and it’s companion star Sirius B.

Sirius B is a white dwarf star with a high-density core that orbits the much larger star Sirius A. The team of astronomers measured the degree of redshift, the star’s stretched light, which is affected by the star’s powerful gravitational field. Sirius B’s gravitational field was 350,000 times stronger than Earth’s gravitational field. Based on the findings, Barstow’s team calculated the mass of Sirius B to be 98% of our sun’s mass, even though it is smaller in size than the Earth. Their findings agree with theoretical predictions and previous measurements. The Hubble observations also revealed the temperature of Sirius A, the brightest-looking star in our nighttime sky, is approximately 45,000 degrees Fahrenheit!