Humanity is fast approaching a moment in its history when we will officially discover extraterrestrial life and the type of electromagnetic technology being employed by all civilisations to travel the stars. With this in mind, it is important that we have a reasonably good grasp of our local cosmic neighbourhood of stars in order for us to determine suitable stellar candidates to visit and considered likely to harbour intelligent and technically-advanced alien life. While all stars are interesting in their own right, the aim is to maximise the bang in one's buck when we start travelling to the stars. Nothing could be better than discovering alien life and one with a technology to really get scientists to sit up and take notice.
Want to know about your nearest stars? Obviously not those living in Hollywood, but the ones located within 12 light years of the Sun. Well, this section is a great place to get a summary of what we know about our nearest stellar neighbours and the things that are likely to be lurking in those systems.
Please note that mass, radius and luminosity data of stars are relative to the Sun; stellar distances are in light years; and one astronomical unit is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. The information presented in this section was gathered from various astronomical books and journals and should provide a fairly accurate look at our nearest stellar neighbours. For a brief description of the stars within a certain range from our Sun, please click on one of the distances of interest below.
If you would like to see other information included in this section (whether to improve on this topic or suggest new areas worthy of discussion), don't hesitate to send us a message.
Contents
- RELATIVE POSITIONS OF STARS (Image Size: 98k)
Where are they located? - ZERO TO 4.3 LIGHT YEARS
4 stars - 4.3 TO 8.2 LIGHT YEARS
3 stars - 8.2 TO 9.5 LIGHT YEARS
5 stars - 9.5 TO 11 LIGHT YEARS
4 stars - 11 TO 11.5 LIGHT YEARS
7 stars - 11.5 TO 12.5 LIGHT YEARS
7 stars - SUMMARY
Could ETs be lurking nearby? - Bibliography