brightest star in the northern constellation Canis Minor (Lesser Dog) and one of the brightest in the entire sky, with an apparent visual magnitude of 0.41. Procyon lies about 11 light-years from the Earth and is a visual binary, a bright yellow-white subgiant with a faint, white dwarf companion of about the 10th magnitude. The name apparently derives from Greek words for “before the dog,” in reference to the constellation.
Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.
If you think a reference to this article on "Procyon" will enhance your Web site,
blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article,
and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.
You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.
We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.
Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.