The Nearest Stars to Earth

These are our closest neighbors!

Note that this list is continually changing as astronomers discover nearby stars with ever more sensitive detectors in a variety of spectral ranges, especially the InfraRed, where numerous small stars emit their energy. Recall that the brightest magnitudes are the largest negative numbers.

 
Name				Distance	Apparant	Absolute
				(lightyears)	Magnitude	Magnitude
								
Sun				0.00001		-26.8		4.75	 
Proxima CentauriAlpha Cen C	4.3		?check		15.5
Rigil Kentaurus	Alpha Cen A	4.3		-0.1		4.3
Alpha Centauri B		4.3		1.5		5.8
Barnard's Star			5.9		9.5		13.2
Wolf 359			7.6		13.5		16.8
Lalande 21185			8.1		7.5		10.4
Sirius A	Alpha CMa A	8.6		-1.5		1.4
Sirius B			8.6		7.2		11.5
Luyten 726-8A			8.9		12.5		15.3
Luyten 726-8B	UV Cet		8.9		13.0		15.8
Ross 154			9.4		10.6		13.3
Ross 248			10.3		12.2		14.8
Epsilon Eridani			10.7		3.7		6.13
Luyten 789-6			10.8		12.2		14.6
Ross 128			10.8		11.1		13.5
61 Cugnus A			11.2		5.2		7.6
61 Cygnus B			11.2		6.0		8.4
Epsilon Ind			11.2		4.7		7.0
Procyon	A	Alpha CMi A	11.4		0.4		2.7
Procyon B			11.4		10.8		13.1
Sigma 2398 A			11.5		8.9		11.2
Sigma 2398 B			11.5		9.7		11.9
Groombridge 34 A		11.6		8.1		10.3
Groombridge 34 B		11.6		11.0		13.3
Lacaille 9352			11.7		7.4		9.6
Tau Ceti			11.9		3.5		5.7
BD +5deg 1668			12.2		9.8		12.0
Luyten 725-32			12.4		11.5		15.3
Kapteyn's Star			12.7		8.8		10.8
Kruger 60 A			12.8		9.7		11.9
Kruger 60 B			12.8		11.2		13.3

And a couple of brighter stars a bit farther away:
Altair		Alpha Aql	16.3		0.77		2.3
Fomalhaut	Alpha PsA A	22.8		1.16		1.9

If directions to these stars were included, you could make a map and see
that they are distributed around us more or less randomly.

What can we learn from this information? Quite a lot.

We live very close (500 lightseconds) to a star. This is probably a necessary condition for the originination and maintenance of life.
Stars are very far apart (average about 8 lightyears for the closest dozen), compared to their size (about 2 lightseconds for the Sun); by a factor of 250 million or so.
Many stars occur in multiple systems, shown here by the suffixes A, B and C from brightest to dimmest. In fact, about 55% of stars in this list are in multiple systems. The nearest star is a triple. And we may be missing many dim stars.
Most of the nearby stars are dimmer (higher numbers for absolute magnitude) than our Sun, by factors of 100 to 10,000.

To see the same list, but with some links to individual stars and constellations, see Chris Dolan's Closest Star page.

Last Updated February 8, 1996

Comments and questions via mailto: Bill Baity

Or contact him at Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS), UCSD 0424, 9500 Gilman Drive, LaJolla CA 92093-0424, tel (619) 534-3209, wbaity@ucsd.edu