Map: Our Sun from 5,000 Light Years Away
Here you go — “Map of Our Universe”
I found one fun idea right away: There are about 30 stars in our neighborhood (depending on how you define our neighborhood). This is pretty much the set of stars that our species could someday possibly visit – or some (one?) from them could visit us ;-)
(If I were influencing the SETI program, I’d concentrate on listening to these stars, but then maybe they do that already. Since a big chunk of them are binary stars, I wonder if any of the rest might have planets ? )
Answer: “Eridani (tenth closest star to Earth) is the closest star known to have a planet, Epsilon Eridani b. It is the third closest star that we can see without a telescope.”
Epsilon Eridani b - nearest Planet beyond our Solar System
Unfortunately, that planet is uninhabitable due to excessive gravity, as it is larger than Jupiter. However that star system may have smaller planets that we haven’t found yet.
have fun,
-David
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