Reply #70: So, let's try an experiment:

[muriel_volestrangler]

put "brightest star in the sky is" (including the quotes) into Google. There's an awful lot of sites that say Sirius. NASA gives this:

Q: What's the brightest star in the sky? Yes, this is a trick question, and there are three answers we can think of.

A: The brightest star in the sky is, obviously, our sun. But its brightness is only due to its proximity to Earth. Discounting the sun (which many people don't often think of as a star), the next brightest star is Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major. But its brightness is also only due to its proximity to Earth (about nine light years). Possibly the brightest stars, or at least the brightest we know of, are the stars of 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic cloud, a huge cluster of the brightest, hottest, most short-lived stars known.

No one answered correctly!

http://www-psao.grc.nasa.gov/asao.quiz/august.97.html