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Detail:
The sun
The position of the Sun among the stars. nearby stars.
© About the stars closest to us tells:
Dr. David Whitehouse - astronomer, science writer for the BBC World News Service.
nearest neighbors.
In order to determine our Sun's well-deserved place among the stars, let's first look at its neighbors. The closest neighbor of the Sun is a system of three stars orbiting each other. The brightest of them Alpha Centauri A, is very similar to our yellow Sun. Alpha Centauri B slightly smaller, and its light has an orange tint, as its surface temperature is cooler - around 4800 °C, while the temperature of the Sun reaches 5800 °C. tells us about its temperature. Cool stars are red, hotter ones are orange, yellow and bluish-white.
The period of revolution of the two main stars of the Alpha Centauri system relative to each other is about 80 years. They are located quite far from each other (the distance between them is comparable to the distance from the Earth to the Sun or from the Sun to the planet Uranus). Third star in the system Alpha Centauri - C, or Proxima Centauri, got its name due to the fact that it is located closest to earth. She is a much more typical representative of the stellar community, despite the fact that this star is dim, red (and therefore cold) and small. It is far from the main pair, about 300 times greater than the distance from the Sun to Pluto. If our Sun had a companion star like Alpha Centauri C, it would look like an ordinary star in the night sky. It could be observed with the naked eye, but it would not stand out against the background of other stars, moreover, it would seem dimmer.
Barnard's Star
Our space neighbor is also barnard's star, named after Edward Emerson Barnard, who lived about a century ago and is said to have been one of the sharpest astronomers on earth. This modest little star is located towards the constellation Ophiuchus. It is the closest star that can be studied from the northern hemisphere with telescopes, but only a few astronomers currently make such observations. Barnard's Star very reminiscent Proxima Centauri and according to the classification is a red dwarf, the most common type of stars in the galaxy.
The mass of red dwarfs is about 10-30% of the mass of our Sun. Their own nuclear reactions are slow, so their lifespan is 10 billion years. These stars are very interesting, and studying them helps to better understand our Sun. The outer layer of our Sun is a zone of convective energy transfer, and in red dwarfs these zones are more powerful and located deeper. In fact, some of these stars may be fully convective. This leads to the generation of strong magnetic fields. When these fields rise above the red surface of the stars, huge explosions can occur.
Stellar flares from dwarf stars are much more energetic than those that can be observed on our Sun. These stars were discovered due to the fact that they flared brightly for several minutes. No wonder they got the name "flashing stars". In addition, these giant stellar flares have been found to generate radio waves. They were first recorded by University of Manchester professor Bernand Lovell in 1959, and later a new large telescope installed at the Jodrell Bank Observatory was used for this purpose. Many years ago, a young graduate student (namely myself) ( Let me remind you that this conversation is led by David Whitehouse, approx. VK.) spent many sleepless nights studying the controls of this radio telescope in order to use new techniques to detect red dwarf stellar flares in nearby outer space. Materials for this work are held in the library at Jodrell Bank.
One of the stars we studied did not want to reveal its secrets. There were many flare observations during one year, and they were practically absent the next year. I remember writing in my notebook: "Is the activity of this star similar to the 11-year cycle of the Sun?" May be.
Barnard's Star moves through outer space, and its apparent movement across the sky is the fastest of all. However, since this star is too small, its movement does not affect the shape of the constellations. The constellations seem to be unchanging, and, from the point of view of man and the duration of his life, they are so. However, over the course of centuries, the stars slowly change their position in space. For example, the period of revolution of our Sun and the planets of the solar system around the center of the galaxy is 200 million years. The process is so slow that constellations that are 10,000 years old are quite recognizable. However, if a modern astronomer were somehow transported into the past by a million years, then, looking at the starry sky, he would be confused. Barnard's Star moves across the sky at a rate of half a degree every 175 years. It is approaching and approximately in 11800 will be close to Earth, at a distance of only four light years (closer than Proxima Centauri).
Years ago, some astronomers believed that a planet was orbiting Barnard's Star. Observations showed that, moving across the sky, the star swayed slightly about the vertical axis. It is possible that this oscillation was caused by the action of gravity of one or more large planets located nearby. However, no clear confirmation could be found, and the wobble of the star itself was almost imperceptible. During the last 10 years, the discovery has been made that in the vicinity of the solar system there are many planets orbiting their stars, i.e. is full of planets, and there is nothing unusual in this.
Other nearby stars
Near the solar system there is another red dwarf, which became famous thanks to the television series Star Trek. This is Star Wolf 359, which played out a spectacular battle between the United Federation of Planets and the Borg - a high-tech pseudo-race of cyborgs controlled by a single brain and increasing their numbers by assimilating entire worlds. Wolf 359 located in the constellation Leo and is the dimmest among its neighbors and one of the dimmest of all stars known to mankind. If the Sun were replaced by the star Wolf 359, there would either be no daylight on Earth, or it would be light only 10 times as bright as moonlight.
There are many more red dwarfs not far from Earth.. Among them one can name Lalande 21 185 in the constellation Ursa Major. It is necessary to remember and UV China- a pair of red dwarfs and a prototype of the entire class of flare stars, which include Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359. The distance between the stars of the pair UV China 6 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and the period of their revolution relative to each other is 25 years. Their total mass is only 30% of the mass of the Sun.
The brightest star near the Sun is Sirius, which is also called the Dog Star because it is located in the constellation Canis Major. In 1862 it was discovered that Sirius is a double star. Sirius A- a bluish-white star, it is 2 times larger than our Sun. Its surface temperature is 10,000 °C. Her little companion Sirius B the closest example of a white dwarf star to Earth. This is an extremely dense star that has completed its evolution and has shrunk to the size of a small planet. It is the same size as our Earth, but has the mass of the Sun. Its substance has such a high density that a cup filled with it will weigh as much as a jet liner. Being on its surface, you would weigh 100 times more than standing on Earth. These two completely different stars rotate relative to each other with a period of 50 years, and the average distance between them is 20 times greater. The last of the stars known to us, the distance to which from the Earth is less than 10 light years, has received the name Ross 154 and is, again, a red dwarf.
Where are we flying?
In 1783, William Herschel published his observations that led to the discovery of solar motion. He determined that our solar system moves between neighboring stars in the direction of the star Lambda Hercules, or Maasim, which means "wrist" in Arabic. To designate this direction, Herschel introduced the term apex (from the Latin "arech" - top), which began to mean a point on the celestial sphere, in the direction of which an astronomical object moves. The brightest star in the sky, Sirius, is an antiapex, i.e. point in the direction from which the sun moves.
This is the direction of the Sun's motion in its orbit around the center of the Milky Way. All 100 thousand stars of our Galaxy revolve around its center. The closer a star is to the center of the Galaxy, the faster it moves. As for our Sun, it is 24,000 light-years from the center and orbits at a speed of 220 km/s, making a complete revolution in 230 million years. It turns out that during its existence, the Sun circled the Galaxy about 18 times (according to other sources, 25-30 times). In addition to the circular movement around the center, the Sun also makes oscillatory movements up and down relative to the plane of the Galaxy. The oscillation period is 70 million years. This means that we pass through the median plane of the Galaxy every 35 million years. Some scientists compare this period with the interval between mass extinctions of living beings on Earth. There is no secret that the number of cosmic rays reaching the Earth has been increasing in the last 100 thousand years as the Earth approaches the median plane of the Galaxy. Perhaps this fact will affect the cloudiness and, consequently, the climate of the Earth.
Consists of a number of spiral arms, and our Sun is currently in a small spiral arm called Orion, which connects the larger spiral arms of Sagittarius and Perseus. The Earth passes through the main spiral arm every 100 million years, and the duration of the passage is 10 million years. In the process of passing through the spiral arm, the influence of the nearest supernova increases, and its intense radiation, emitted even at a distance of tens of light years, can change the Earth's climate.
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Your work is disabled JavaScript. Please turn on the scripts in the browser, and you will see the full functionality of the site!rice. The nearest bright star is Alpha Centauri.
The stars closest to the Sun include a number of bright luminaries that have their own names, as well as several southern stars that are inaccessible to observation in northern latitudes. Their colors are very different: blue (Rigel and Spica), yellow (Capella), orange (Arcturus), red (Betelgeuse and Antares).
Most similar in spectrum and luminosity to the Sun is our closest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, the brightest component. It is only 1.33 ps away from us. Apparently, the most distant star from the nearest environment of the solar system is Deneb, located at a distance of about 450 pc. Distances to Rigel, Betelgeuse and β Southern Cross are also difficult to measure. If we consider the volume of space that needs to be explored before we reach a star like Deneb, we see that it is about (450/1.33), or 40,000,000 times the volume that we would have to explore to discover the star α Centauri.
rice. Rigel (β Orionis)
The class M star Betelgeuse is also very bright, but it is closer to the Sun than Rigel. Since its surface is comparatively cold, the star must be enormous in order to emit so much light. Betelgeuse and Antares are among the very few stars whose diameters can be measured with an instrument called an interferometer. It was found that the diameter of Betelgeuse is about 600 times the diameter of the Sun, and the diameter of Antares is only slightly smaller than the diameter of Betelgeuse. The diameter of the star is so large that the entire orbit of Mars fits inside it, and the star can rightfully be called a giant! Betelgeuse appears and appears to also change size with the wrong period.
The closest neighbors of the Sun are stars, the distance to which does not exceed 5 ps. The four brightest stars on this list are Sirius, Altair, Procyon, and Alpha Centauri. These stars shine brightly in the sky because they are close to us, and not because of their exceptional luminosity. They are mostly dwarf stars, or, as we prefer to call them, "main sequence" stars. Many class M dwarfs are flare stars. Although they are usually very low in luminosity, they can sometimes become brighter by 2 or more for a short time; outbreaks of some of them were repeated many times. At least five stars closest to the sun are flaring. Bright lines are observed in their spectra; this singularity is denoted by the letter "e" placed after the spectral class.
rice. Comparative sizes of nearby bright stars
It should be noted that the list of the nearest 44 stars (including the Sun) is actually a list of 44 multiple systems: 11 of these 44 stars are binary and two are triple. In addition, 7 stars have not yet been able to see satellites. These invisible companions are discovered by perturbations in the proper motions of visible stars. Their masses are close to the masses of the planets of our solar system and are, in order of magnitude, several hundredths of the mass of the Sun, and the largest one has a mass equal to 0.001 of the mass of the Sun. For example, the satellite of the star Ross 614 A has a very small mass, equal to 1/12 of the mass of the Sun. American astronomer Willem Leiten discovered a double star, the mass of each component of which is even smaller and hardly reaches 1/25 of the mass of the Sun.
The list of nearest neighbors contains six blue-white stars of very low luminosity, representatives of the class of white dwarfs. These stars form the most interesting group of our neighbors; the most famous of them is the satellite of Sirius. Two more are also satellites of bright stars, and the other two are. When the satellite of Sirius was discovered, its high temperature, combined with low luminosity, indicated that this was an unusual and, perhaps, a very rare object. No one had previously thought that there could be stars with masses only slightly less than the mass of the Sun, and with radii barely larger than the radius of the Earth. In a recently published list of stars located within a radius of no more than 20 ps from the Sun, the German astronomer Wilhelm Gliese lists 49 white dwarfs. Research by Leyten and others has shown that white dwarfs are as common as stars like the sun. In all, Leithen has identified about 3,000 "well-established, probable, and possible" white dwarfs, which he calls "the stars that are the easiest to identify and the most difficult to observe." The criteria for their identification are large proper motions and a color index comparable to the color index of a class B or A star whose light has not been absorbed.
The apparent magnitude of most known white dwarfs is 14m. For more than half of the discovered white dwarfs, it was possible to determine the spectra and parallaxes, since the stars can be plotted on the spectrum diagram - the absolute magnitude of stars. They form a branch not quite parallel to the main sequence, and their absolute values M are in the range from +10 to +15, i.e., their luminosities are in the range from 0.01 to 0.0001 of the luminosity of the Sun. Their dimensions range from the diameter of Mercury to the diameter of Uranus, that is, between 1/3 and 4 of the diameters of the Earth. Leuthen calculated that 5% of all stars appear to be white dwarfs.
> closest star to the sun
- the closest star to the Sun: description, characteristics, photo, stars of the northern hemisphere, Barnard, Sirius, comparison with the Sun, distances.
To catch your friends, you can ask them about closest star. Most immediately start talking about Betelgeuse or Sirius. But here lies the catch. Of course, the closest star to the Earth is the Sun (150 million km). But which star is closest to the Sun?
Which star is closest to the Sun
Alpha Centauri occupies the third position in terms of brightness and lives only 4.37 light years away. But this is not a single object, but a triple system. First of all, we see a binary stellar pair making revolutions around a common center of gravity in 80 years. A is brighter, and B is slightly inferior. The third member is Proxima Centauri. Remember this name, as this star is in first place in terms of proximity to the solar system (4.24 light years).
The system covers an area in the constellation Centaurus, which can only be observed from the southern hemisphere. But even there it will not be possible to discern this star. The fact is that it is too weak and you will need a powerful technique. To give you an idea, it would take New Horizons 78,000 years to fly to Proxima Centauri.
It has been in first place in proximity for 32,000 years and will remain in this position for another 33,000 years. After 26700 years, it will reduce the distance to 3.11 light years. After her, Ross 248 will come closest.
The closest star to the Sun in the Northern Hemisphere
If we talk about the northern hemisphere, then the closest to the Sun will be Barnard's star - a red dwarf (). But it is also dim and not visible to the naked eye. If we take only celestial bodies accessible for observation without technology, then it is the closest (8.6 light years). It is twice ahead of the Sun in size and mass.
How are distances to nearby stars measured?
Parallax is used to determine the distance to stars. What's the point? Extend your hand and place your finger against a distant object. Close your eyes one by one and you will realize that the object seems to be shifting. This is parallax.
It is necessary to calculate the distance to the star when our planet is in one of the orbits (in summer), and then wait 6 months until it is on the opposite side, and measure again. After we measure the angle already in relation to another object. This scheme works for any object living within 100 light years. Below is a list of the closest stars to the Sun with descriptions and distances.
| Star system | Star or brown dwarf | Spec. Class | View. sound led. | Distance, St. year |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | solar system | The sun | 0 | G2V | −26.72±0.04 | 8.32 ± 0.16 St. min |
| 1 | α Centauri | 1 | M5.5Ve | 11,09 | 4.2421±0.0016 | |
| α Centauri A | 2 | G2V | 0,01 | 4.3650 ± 0.0068 | ||
| α Centauri B | 2 | K1V | 1,34 | |||
| 2 | 4 | M4ve | 9,53 | 5.9630 ± 0.0109 | ||
| 3 | Luman 16 | A | 5 | L8 | 23,25 | 6.588±0.062 |
| B | 5 | L9/T1 | 24,07 | |||
| 4 | WISE 0855–0714 | 7 | Y | 13,44 | 7,18 +0,78 −0,65 | |
| 5 | Wolf 359 | 8 | M6V | 13,44 | 7.7825 ± 0.0390 | |
| 6 | Lalande 21185 | 9 | M2V | 7,47 | 8.2905±0.0148 | |
| 7 | Sirius | Sirius A | 10 | A1V | −1,43 | 8.5828 ± 0.0289 |
| Sirius B | 10 | DA2 | 8,44 | |||
| 8 | Leuthen 726-8 | Leuthen 726-8 A | 12 | M5.5Ve | 12,54 | 8.7280 ± 0.0631 |
| Leuthen 726-8 B | 12 | M6ve | 12,99 | |||
| 9 | Ross 154 | 14 | M3.5Ve | 10,43 | 9.6813±0.0512 | |
| 10 | Ross 248 | 15 | M5.5Ve | 12,29 | 10.322±0.036 | |
| 11 | WISE 1506+7027 | 16 | T6 | 14.32 | 10,521 | |
| 12 | ε Eridani | 17 | K2V | 3,73 | 10.522±0.027 | |
| 13 | Lacaille 9352 | 18 | M1.5Ve | 7,34 | 10.742±0.031 | |
| 14 | Ross 128 | 19 | M4Vn | 11,13 | 10.919±0.049 | |
| 15 | WISE 0350-5658 | 20 | Y1 | 22.8 | 11,208 | |
| 16 | EZ Aquarius | EZ Aquarius A | 21 | M5Ve | 13,33 | 11.266±0.171 |
| EZ Aquarius B | 21 | M? | 13,27 | |||
| EZ Aquarius C | 21 | M? | 14,03 | |||
| 17 | Procyon | Procyon A | 24 | F5V-IV | 0,38 | 11.402±0.032 |
| Procyon B | 24 | DA | 10,70 | |||
| 18 | 61 Swans | 61 Cygnus A | 26 | K5V | 5,21 | 11.403±0.022 |
| 61 Cygnus B | 26 | K7V | 6,03 | |||
| 19 | Struve 2398 | Struve 2398 A | 28 | M3V | 8,90 | 11.525±0.069 |
| Struve 2398 B | 28 | M3,5V | 9,69 | |||
| 20 | Groombridge 34 | Groombridge 34 A | 30 | M1.5V | 8,08 | 11.624±0.039 |
| Groombridge 34 B | 30 | M3,5V | 11,06 | |||
| 21 | ε Indian | ε Indian A | 32 | K5Ve | 4,69 | 11.824±0.030 |
| ε Indian B | 32 | T1V | >23 | |||
| ε Indian C | 32 | T6V | >23 | |||
| 22 | DX Cancer | 35 | M6.5Ve | 14,78 | 11.826±0.129 | |
| 23 | τ China | 36 | G8Vp | 3,49 | 11.887±0.033 | |
| 24 | GJ 1061 | 37 | M5,5V | 13,09 | 11.991±0.057 | |
| 25 | YZ China | 38 | M4,5V | 12,02 | 12.132 ± 0.133 | |
| 26 | Star of Leuthen | 39 | M3.5Vn | 9,86 | 12.366±0.059 | |
| 27 | Star of Teegarden | 40 | M6,5V | 15,14 | 12.514±0.129 | |
| 28 | SCR 1845-6357 | SCR 1845-6357 A | 41 | M8,5V | 17,39 | 12.571±0.054 |
| SCR 1845-6357B | 42 | T6 | ||||
| 29 | Kapteyn's Star | 43 | M1.5V | 8,84 | 12.777±0.043 | |
| 30 | Lacaille 8760 | 44 | M0V | 6,67 | 12.870±0.057 | |
| 31 | WISE J053516.80-750024.9 | 45 | Y1 | 21,1 | 13,046 | |
| 32 | Kruger 60 | Kruger 60 A | 46 | M3V | 9,79 | 13.149±0.074 |
| Kruger 60 B | 46 | M4V | 11,41 | |||
| 33 | DEN 1048-3956 | 48 | M8,5V | 17,39 | 13.167±0.082 | |
| 34 | UGPS J072227.51-054031.2 | 49 | T9 | 24.32 | 13,259 | |
| 35 | Ross 614 | Ross 614 A | 50 | M4,5V | 11,15 | 13.349±0.110 |
| Ross 614 B | 50 | M5,5V | 14,23 | |||
| 37 | Wolf 1061 | 53 | M3V | 10,07 | 13.820±0.098 | |
| 38 | van maanen star | 54 | DZ7 | 12,38 | 14.066 ± 0.109 | |
| № | Designation | Designation | № | Spec. Class | View. sound led. | Distance, St. year |
| Star system | Star or brown dwarf | |||||
At a distance of 17 light years from the solar system, there are 45 stars. In total, in a galaxy capable of being 200 billion stellar celestial bodies. Some are so faint that they cannot be detected without a powerful telescope that only professional observatories can buy.
Since ancient times, man has directed his gaze to the sky, in which he observed thousands of stars. They fascinated him and made him think about the world around him, space. Over the centuries, knowledge has accumulated and systematized. When it became obvious that the stars are not only luminous dots, but real space objects, and of enormous size, our ancestors had a dream - to fly to them. But first it was necessary to determine how far they are.
Here is the essential difference between them:
- The size. A star, as a rule, is much larger than ordinary planets.
- Weight. A star has a much larger mass than a planet.
- Chemical composition. The first contains predominantly light elements, the second - both light and heavy.
- Temperature. For planets, it is much lower. This explains the difference in the emission spectra: planetary radiation is mainly infrared, stellar - ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma radiation.
- Brightness and intensity of luminosity. The stars themselves emit light, and the planets only reflect it.
- Chemical reactions. Thermonuclear and nuclear reactions take place in stellar bodies, and over the entire volume of their body, on planetary bodies only nuclear reactions are possible, and only in the center of the nucleus.
- Movement in space. Planetary bodies move around the stars along an elliptical trajectory and may have satellites. Stellar - do not rotate and have no satellites.
- The sun is a star. And it belongs to the class of yellow stars. The temperature of the Sun is average for its type - not too high and not too low.
closest star to earth
If we are talking about the limits of the solar system, it is, of course, the sun. It is a star and is closest to us of all others. It is also the center of our system. Without it, life on our planet would be impossible, and the Earth arose along with this star. Even if only for this reason, it deserves special attention.
Like any star, the Sun is mostly made up of helium and hydrogen. Moreover, the latter cyclically turns into the former. As a result of thermonuclear reactions, heavier elements are formed. And the older the star, the more of these elements accumulate. In terms of age, our Sun is no longer young, it is approximately 5 billion years old. The weight of the star closest to us reaches 5958000000000000000000 earth tons (for convenience it is written in other units, but this number is obviously the most obvious).
The diameter of the Sun is 1,392,000 kilometers. The surface temperature can reach 1,500,000 degrees Celsius. It increases in the center. The atmosphere has three parts:
- crown;
- chromosphere;
- photosphere.
If we talk about the nearest star outside our system, then it is a small Proxima Centauri.
The brightest stars beyond the solar system
Proxima Centauri
It is part of the triple, which is located at a distance of about four light years from us. A light year is scientifically called a parsec. The very name of this asterisk in translation from Latin sounds like “nearest”. What unequivocally suggests an understanding that even the ancients noticed both its features and the nature of its location, giving a telling name.
Although four parsecs seems like a tiny distance within the universe, for humans it is very far away. And to reach the limits of Proxima Centauri, it will take more than one generation of people.
Even the most keen eye among the stars will not see it. In the sky it can only be found through a telescope. It shines weaker than the Sun, about 150 times. In terms of dimensions, it is also noticeably inferior, and the temperature on its surface is two times lower. Astronomers identify this star as a brown dwarf and believe that finding planets next to it is hardly possible. Therefore, there is no point in flying there.
Alpha Centauri
At the same time, the triple system Alpha Centauri is also relatively close to us and deserves attention - such objects are not very common in the Universe. They are attractive because the stars in them revolve one around the other in intricate orbits, and sometimes it even happens that they “eat up” a neighbor.
You will learn about the distances to the stars from this video.
deep space
The most distant object discovered so far in the Universe (of those visible without the use of special optical instruments) is the Andromeda Nebula. Its brightness corresponds to about a quarter of the magnitude. And the most distant star to the Earth of this galaxy is located from us, according to the calculations of astronomers, at a distance of 2 million light years. An unthinkable value! After all, we observe it as it was 2 million years ago - that's how easy it is to look into the cosmic past!
The closest galaxy to us is a dwarf galaxy that can be tracked in the constellation Sagittarius. It is so close to us that the Milky Way literally absorbs it. Although it should be noted that in any case it will take 80,000 light years to fly to it. The Magellanic Cloud is not even worth mentioning: it lags behind us by almost 170 parsecs.
According to NASA, there are 45 more stars at a distance of 17 parsecs from the Sun. Our galaxy as a whole has over 200 billion stars. At the same time, some of them are so dim that they are almost impossible to detect without the use of special equipment. Probably, thanks to the latest technologies, scientists will be able to find stars that are even closer to us.
Video
You will learn interesting information about the Sun from this video.
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From Earth it seems that the stars are so close. We see them very small, but in reality they are just huge. They are also at a great distance from our planet. There are both distant and closest stars.
Many people can immediately say that the closest star to the Earth is the Sun. But in fact, we will talk about another star closest to the Earth - Proxima Centauri. This star was discovered in 1915 by an astronomer from England. Until that time, astronomers believed that the closest star was Alpha Centauri. But when viewed from a physical point of view, these two stars represent one double star. The star closest to Earth is a red dwarf.
These stars are small and have low temperatures. But over time, they begin to shrink even more and at the same time heat up. After some time, these stars turn into white dwarfs. After some amount of time, this will happen to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. In addition to all this, this star is a flare star. In the second half of the last century, astronomers considered it the most active in this regard.
This was discovered by American astronomer Harlow Shelley. During the flash, its brightness increases. Proxima Centauri is a dim star, so it is impossible to see it without a telescope. It is worth noting that the closest star cannot be seen in the northern hemisphere either. To see it, you need to start at 27 degrees north latitude. From Earth to the nearest star 4.2 light years. It is worth noting that the closest star to the Earth is 7 times smaller than the Sun. Proxima Centauri is part of the single star Alpha Centauri.
It was Alpha Centauri that used to be considered the closest star to the Sun. Interestingly, this star is located in the constellation Canis Major and was originally named VY. The star closest to the Sun revolves around Alpha Centauri every half a million years. But there are no orbiting planets around this star. Also, this star emits very little energy.
The constellation Canis Major has a dwarf elliptical cluster that is closest to the Milky Way. Occasionally, Proxima Centauri intersects with this cluster. Also in this constellation is the brightest star - Sirius. It is worth noting that Sirius can also be considered the closest star to our planet and to the Sun. It is believed that the closest city to the stars is Prague. According to legend, the fate of this city was foretold before it was founded.
