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3D Views
Alpha Centauri
Hover mouse cursor over each image to turn on its star labels.
The view, on the right, labels some of the brighter stars in Earth's night skies. Our sun is marked by the white diamond, while Alpha Centauri, next door, is tagged with a green "focus" marker. |
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Scale = 16 parsecs.
Alpha Centauri is highlighted by the green "focus" marker.
Our own sun is located at the white diamond. |
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Here the scale is 8 parsecs along a side. Moving your mouse cursor over this figure reveals the dim, red dwarfs that fill the spaces between the brighter stars, including Barnard's Star, Wolf 359, and Ross 154.
The next 3D view (below the following table) zooms in even farther to the 4-parsec scale.
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Scale = 8 parsecs
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Next-Door Neighbors: Alpha Centauri
The following table is a list of Alpha Centauri's next-door neighbors. After the star's name, the distance from Alpha Centauri is given in parsecs. This is followed by the distance from Sol (our sun), the Spectral Type, Visual Magnitude, and number of stars in the system. The Spectral Type and Visual Magnitude are given for the primary star, if there are more than one in the system. The magnitudes given are those of the stars as seen from Alpha Centauri.
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Name |
Distance |
To Sol |
SpType |
VMag |
Stars |
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Sol |
1.34 pc |
0.0 pc |
G2 V |
0.44 |
1 |
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Sirius (Alpha CMa) |
2.92 pc |
2.63 pc |
A1 V |
-1.17 |
2 |
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Wolf 359 |
2.54 pc |
2.39 pc |
M5 V |
13.5 |
1 |
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Barnard's Star |
1.98 pc |
1.83 pc |
M5 V |
9.72 |
1 |
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Ross 154 |
2.45 pc |
2.93 pc |
M4.5 V |
10.02 |
1 |
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Epsilon Indi |
2.81 pc |
3.46 pc |
K4.5 V |
4.23 |
1 |
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At the 4-parsec scale, only three stars remain in the skies of Alpha Centauri besides our sun — Ross 154, Barnard's Star, and Epsilon Indi. Only the last of these would be visible to the unaided eye — a dim, fourth magnitude Epsilon Indi.
The size of the Oort cloud is shown relative to the interstellar distances. This cloud is a region of frozen, cometary material orbiting our sun, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. It is from this region that the long-period comets are thought to originate. |
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Scale = 4 parsecs (turning on the red dwarfs)
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At the 2-parsec scale, it is easy to see the size of the Alpha Centauri system, compared to the gulf of space separating our two systems.
Our own sun would be a bright, first magnitude star in the Alpha Centauri night skies. To see what some of those night skies look like, click here. |
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Scale = 2 parsecs
3D scenes from "Stars in the NeighborHood" software.
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