Welcome to Astronomy! I’m ALPHA CENTAURI, and I’ll be your guide around here. The universe is an enormous place. Come meet the out-of-this-world beings who inhabit it. Click on my friends to the left to meet them.

I'm BETELGEUSE,
a red supergiant and the second-brightest star in the constellation. Call a doctor! I’m swelling up and running a temperature of 6,500 degrees Fahrenheit!

I'm the BIG BANG.
Old, mystical, and unknowable, I am the start of time itself. At first there was nothing. And then, in fractions of a second, I created all matter, energy, and order.

Hiya, I'm BROWN DWARF.
I’m not dazzlingly brilliant, but characters like me are the missing links between stars and planets. Shy and retiring, failed stars like me still manage to glow weakly.

I'm JUPITER.
I coulda been a contender—a real star—but instead I’m just the biggest planet. I’m absolutely gigantic, made almost entirely of hydrogen gas (plus a little helium, too), and I have a system of moons orbiting me.

Look out! It’s me, METEORITE!
Blazing through Earth’s atmosphere and smashing into the ground, I can punch a crater in Earth as I crash and burn.

I'm SIRIUS!
I’m the top dog and come as two for the price of one! The brightest star in the Earth’s night sky, I’m also called the Dog Star.

I'm THE SUN,
and I’m a total star—the center of everything, baby! A fearsome fireball burning 600 million tons of hydrogen every second, I provide light and heat for the orbiting scraps of matter called planets.

I'm VENUS.
Bright and shiny, I hang in the sky, a dazzling beauty. My starlike brilliance is caused by the Sun’s rays being reflected from my thick yellow clouds—this makes me the most radiant object in the night sky after the Moon.