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Here's a good collection of details about the entire star system of Proxima Centauri, including its planets. https://www.star-facts.com/proxima-centauri/ https
by ethbr0 5y ago
Here's a good collection of details about the entire star system of Proxima Centauri, including its planets.
https://www.star-facts.com/proxima-centauri/ https://www.star-facts.com/proxima-centauri/
Also fascinating, a relative distance vs time graph of close stars. It turns out we'll have closer distances for 6 in the next 10,000 - 50,000 years.
https://www.star-facts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Nearest-stars-trajectory.png https://www.star-facts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Neares...
Somehow I feel like Elon Musk has a print out of that graph on his office wall.
- rnk 5y agoThanks for that chart, that site is really worth checking out! There is a ton of cool stuff there, like the nearest starts, when we computed their distances, and other thing.
- irrational 5y agoI only counted 5 (including Proxima Centauri). What are the six that you see?
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoBarnards Star, Lalande 21185, then Alpha Centauri, then Proxima Centauri, then Ross 248, then Gliese 445 makes 6. There are 6 if you count Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri separately; 7 if you count both stars in the Alpha Centauri pair separately, and 5 if you count Alpha and Proxima Centauri separately. Alpha Centauri is the binary system of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, which are separated by about 10-30 AU. It's very, very close in terms of interstellar distances to Proxima Centauri, which is a red dwarf that orbits Alpha Centauri A and B at a distance of 13000 AU, or 0.2 LY - a remote enough orbit that it makes sense to keep track of whether it's on the near side or far side of the triple-star system.
- ruffrey 5y agoFor reference, Saturn is about 9-10 AU from the Sun.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- akamoonknight 5y agoMaking an assumption here about Proxima Centauri's own Oort Cloud, but seems like if it's the same size as ours, they'd overlap? Seems like a potentially interesting way for "stuff" to get transferred from one solar system to another.
- jl6 5y agoI believe we are discovering that space isn’t as empty as we once imagined. Rock-hopping could be a viable method of (slow) interstellar travel.
- oAlbe 5y agoIsn't that how you end up in an endless Solar System war? Belta-lowda! Belta-lowda! Belta-lowda!
- JohnWhigham 5y agoEh, we're talking about a section of an arm on a galaxy that we're in. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in between most galaxies.
- floxy 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergalactic_star#Mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergalactic_star#Mass
- ncmncm 5y agoIf you take long enough at it, you get comfortable out there and don't need stars anymore.
- kibwen 5y ago"Unlike the Sun, which will evolve into a red giant in 6.5 billion years and reach the end of its life at an age of about 10 billion years, Proxima will stay on the main sequence for another four trillion years due to its low mass and low energy production." They laughed at me when I bought investment property on Proxima Centauri b, but who'll be the one laughing in 10.000000001 billion years?
- divbzero 5y ago“Stars with a mass of less than 0.25 solar masses do not evolve into red giants.… Toward the end of the blue dwarf phase, Proxima will become considerably more luminous, reaching up to 2.5% of the Sun’s luminosity. Once it runs out of hydrogen fuel, it will evolve into a white dwarf, skipping the red giant phase, and gradually lose all its heat energy.” So we just need to tackle climate change and learn to live sustainably on Earth, then we’ll have a few billion years to figure out how to get to Proxima Centauri.
- ethbr0 5y agoI thought that was interesting. Especially when the next news article I read called it a "dying star" (presumably their literary license on red dwarf). Everything's relative!