The Closest star to the Earth

The Nearest Stars, as Seen from the Earth

These are our closest neighbors!

Note that this list is continually changing as astronomers discover nearby stars with ever more sensitive detectors in a variety of spectral ranges, especially the infrared, where numerous small stars emit their energy. Recall that the brightest magnitudes are the largest negative numbers.

Common Name	Scientific Name	Distance (light years)	Apparent Magnitude	Absolute Magnitude	Spectral Type
Sun		-	-26.72	4.8	G2V
Proxima Centauri	V645 Cen	4.2	11.05 (var.)	15.5	M5.5Vc
Rigil Kentaurus	Alpha Cen A	4.3	-0.01	4.4	G2V
	Alpha Cen B	4.3	1.33	5.7	K1V
Barnard's Star		6.0	9.54	13.2	M3.8V
Wolf 359	CN Leo	7.7	13.53 (var.)	16.7	M5.8Vc
	BD +36 2147	8.2	7.50	10.5	M2.1Vc
Luyten 726-8A	UV Cet A	8.4	12.52 (var.)	15.5	M5.6Vc
Luyten 726-8B	UV Cet B	8.4	13.02 (var.)	16.0	M5.6Vc
Sirius A	Alpha CMa A	8.6	-1.46	1.4	A1Vm
Sirius B	Alpha CMa B	8.6	8.3	11.2	DA
Ross 154		9.4	10.45	13.1	M3.6Vc
Ross 248		10.4	12.29	14.8	M4.9Vc
	Epsilon Eri	10.8	3.73	6.1	K2Vc
Ross 128		10.9	11.10	13.5	M4.1V
	61 Cyg A (V1803 Cyg)	11.1	5.2 (var.)	7.6	K3.5Vc
	61 Cyg B	11.1	6.03	8.4	K4.7Vc
	Epsilon Ind	11.2	4.68	7.0	K3Vc
	BD +43 44 A	11.2	8.08	10.4	M1.3Vc
	BD +43 44 B	11.2	11.06	13.4	M3.8Vc
Luyten 789-6		11.2	12.18	14.5
Procyon A	Alpha CMi A	11.4	0.38	2.6	F5IV-V
Procyon B	Alpha CMi B	11.4	10.7	13.0	DF
	BD +59 1915 A	11.6	8.90	11.2	M3.0V
	BD +59 1915 B	11.6	9.69	11.9	M3.5V
	CoD -36 15693	11.7	7.35	9.6	M1.3Vc

If directions to these stars were included, you could make a map and see that they are distributed around us more or less randomly.

What can we learn from this information? Quite a lot.

We live very close (500 lightseconds) to a star. This is probably a necessary condition for the originination and maintenance of life.
Stars are very far apart (average about 8 lightyears for the closest dozen), compared to their size (about 2 lightseconds for the Sun); by a factor of 250 million or so.
Many stars occur in multiple systems, shown here by the suffixes A, B and C from brightest to dimmest. In fact, about 55% of stars in this list are in multiple systems. The nearest star is a triple. And we may be missing many dim stars.
Most of the nearby stars are dimmer (higher numbers for absolute magnitude) than our Sun, by factors of 100 to 10,000.

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The Closest star to the Earth

The Nearest Stars, as Seen from the Earth

These are our closest neighbors!

Chris Dolan's Home Page