More Canopus

Finding your way to the other bodies of the solar system is a tough chore. They’re a long way away, they’re relatively small targets, and they’re in constant motion. So it helps to have some navigational beacons to guide you.
One of those beacons is the Sun — the brightest object in the sky. And for many spacecraft, another is Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky. It’s a long way from the Sun, so tracking both objects allows a craft to triangulate its position. That provides a precise track of its location in space.
Canopus would make a good navigational beacon for any civilization within a thousand light-years of it. That’s because it’s extremely bright — more than 10 thousand times brighter than the Sun. So even though it’s more than 300 light-years away, it outshines all the other stars except Sirius, which is less than nine light-years away.
Canopus shines so bright because of its size and surface temperature. It’s about 70 times the Sun’s diameter, and its surface i