This is the star closest to the sun.

The stars closest to the Sun are scattered across the vastness of the universe and can be seen with the naked eye from Earth. Because of their size and high brightness, these bright points can travel long distances in space and become noticeable to the human eye.

Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, is located 4.3 light-years away. See below some interesting facts about the nearby stars.

What are the three stars closest to the sun?

To simplify understanding astronomical distances, scientists use units such as light years and astronomical units (AU). A light year is the distance light travels in one year, which is about 9.46 trillion kilometers, while an AU (the distance between the Earth and the Sun) is about 150 million kilometers.

The need to adopt other units of measurement comes from practical calculations. To give you an idea, if astronomers use kilometers to measure distances between objects in space, some values ​​can exceed nine digits.

Stars closest to the sun:

1. Proxima Centauri: It is located 38 trillion kilometers from the Sun, and is classified as the faintest star in the Alpha Centauri star system. This celestial body is so far away that a spacecraft traveling at 17.3 km/s would take about 73,000 years to reach it. Even if we traveled at the speed of light, the journey would take about 4.22 years;
2. Alpha Centauri A and BThe Alpha Centauri system consists of two stars: Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, located 4.4 light years from the Sun. These two stars form a binary system, separated by a distance equal to 23 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun (150 million kilometers). It can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere, and is close to the constellation Cruzeiro do Sul;
3. Bernard’s StarBarnard’s star is located 5.94 light-years from the Sun and is a red dwarf that has been the subject of studies for more than a century. In 2018, NASA confirmed the existence of an exoplanet orbiting this star. According to the researchers, this exoplanet can be classified as a “super-Earth,” with a mass at least 3.2 times that of Earth, and it orbits it in about 233 days.

The stars closest to the Sun reveal much about our place in the universe. With distances that challenge our understanding and the possibility of harboring exoplanets, these star systems continue to be an important focus of astronomical research, increasingly expanding our knowledge of the universe.

With information from National Geographic.