Humanity is fast approaching the moment in its history when we will officially discover extraterrestrial life and the type of electromagnetic technology that all civilisations use to travel the stars. With this in mind, it is important that we have a reasonably good understanding of our local cosmic neighbourhood of stars so that we can identify suitable stellar candidates to visit that are likely to harbour intelligent and technologically advanced alien life. While all stars are interesting in their own right, the aim is to get the most bang for our buck when we go to the stars. Nothing could be better than discovering alien life, and one with the technology to make scientists sit up and take notice.
Do you want to know about your nearest stars? Not the ones living in Hollywood, of course, 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 these systems.
Please note that the star mass, radii and luminosities are given relative to the Sun; star distances are given in light years; and an astronomical unit is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. The information presented in this section has been gathered from various astronomical books and journals and should provide a fairly accurate view of our nearest stellar neighbours. For a brief description of the stars within a certain range of our Sun, please click on one of the distances of interest below.
If you would like any other information to be included in this section (either to improve on this topic or to suggest new areas worthy of discussion), please 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