How Many Light Years Away Is The Closest Star

Proxima centauri the closest star to our own is still 40 208 000 000 000 km away.

How many light years away is the closest star. It has eight planets orbiting it. Unfortunately it appears to have none. Alpha centauri a b are roughly 4 35 light years. It is currently predicted to pass 19 300 3 200 astronomical units 0 305 0 051 light years from the sun in 1 280 0 041.

The closest star proxima centauri is 4 24 light years away. It is about 4 22 light years from earth and is the closest star other than the sun. Proxima centauri type m5 magnitude 11 0 distance 4 22 ly this dim red dwarf is the nearest star to the sun and it is a member of the alpha centauri system despite lying 0 24 light years from the main pair of stars requiring over one. Or about 268 770 au when we talk about the distances to the stars we no longer use the au or astronomical unit.

It s actually faint proxima centauri that claims the honor of being our true nearest stellar neighbor at only 4 24 light years away. Walking to proxima centauri would take 215 million years. The next closest star is a faint red dwarf about 5 96 light years from earth. The inner binary appears to the unaided eye as a single star the third brightest in the night sky but it lies 4 37 light years from the sun.

It s called barnard s star after american astronomer e e. They are an average of 4 3 light years from earth. The sun is approximately 94 million miles away from our planet but it looks and feels much closer. So how can we measure such a.

A light year is 9 44 trillion km or 5 88 trillion miles. It was once hoped that it might contain planets around it and astronomers made many attempts to try and spot them. The time it takes for light to reach earth from our closest star the sun is only around 8 minutes. A light year is the distance light travels in one year it is equal to 9 461 x 10 12 km.

The closest encounter to the sun so far predicted is the low mass orange dwarf star gliese 710 hip 89825 with roughly 60 the mass of the sun. If you turned it up and went as fast as apollo 11 went to the moon it would still take 43 000 years. This system is a triple star syste. The third star is proxima centauri.

Information on the nearest stars sun type g2 magnitude 26 8 distance 0 0000158 ly a typical yellow dwarf star. But if you are asking for the closest star after the sun then it is the proxima centauri which is a part of the alpha centauri system. The closest star to us is the sun which is about 8 5 light minutes away. Commonly the light year is used.