A Close Encounter Of The Stellar Kind

Beowulf_Boy writes "Acording to the APOD on July 7th, The star in this image known as Gliese (Gl) 710 (currently 63 lightyears away), will be only 1 Lightyear from Sol in 1.5 million years. Currently, it is much to faint to be seen by the naked eye, but, in 1,502,000 A.D. it will be at .6 magnitude, rivaling the current bright star of Antares. Although Gliese 710 will not apparently present any major dangers, it could possibly scatter debris out of the Oort cloud, cause many more comets and meteors than usual. This future stellar encounter was discovered by researchers Joan Garcia-Sanchez and Robert Preston (JPL), and collaborators while studying stars in the solar neighborhood using data from the Hipparcos Astrometry Satellite."