In the case of bright stars, particularly close to ... Martin wrote in her 1907 book "The Friendly Stars" (Revised with Donald H. Menzel in 1964), that you can watch Sirius, "twinkling fast ...

calling the brightest stars “first magnitude.” About 200 years later, the Egyptian polymath and author of the famous astronomy book Almagest, Claudius Ptolemy, refined the order of stars ...