New Star in the Neighborhood

tachyonflow writes "Well, it's probably been around for a while, but it's new to us. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that astronomers have discovered a new star only 7.8 light-years from our sun. It's a red dwarf that's not visible to the naked eye from earth. I guess it's time to update those Celestia databases..."

Comments

It's not a "new star"

[Mensa Babe]

Well, it's not exactly a new star, in a sense that it was formed recently. It is just a recently discoverd, but a very old star. The Slashdot summary is somewhat misleading, but the article is very interesting, I highly recommend reading it. Not that I posted this story two hours before, only to have it rejected... *sigh*

worth a closer look

[js7a]

Excellent. Finding one of these is worth zillions of galaxies, quasars, and the like.

Even if it doesn't have liquid water, gasious oxygen, or solid land, then it can still focus as the fulcrum of our local jump point.

Re:worth a closer look

[js7a]

how is 7.8 lightyears local?

It's local if you're headed in that direction. Alpha Centari, Barnard's, and Wolf 359 are all on the same side.

Also, for gravity assist, it's not the size of the mass that matters so much as its relative motion.

it's rather misleading to make Sol so large, but hey, what can you do?

Solstation has a nice 3-D star map Java applet.

Nemesis anyone?

[RalphBNumbers]

I just started reading Nemesis by Isaac Asimov last night.

The book starts with the discovery of a neighbor star, later named Nemesis. It is a Red Dwarf, and closer to Earth than Alpha Centuari. It is also dimmer than one would expect because of a dust cloud between it and the solar system.

Now how's that for coincidence?