Our nearest star still lies trillions of miles in distance
Lookingskyward on a beautiful clear night last week , I was struck by just how many stars I could see.
Now I’d like to know how close the nearest star is to us. – T.
As it’s so faint, I’m afraid you can’t actually see the closest star to us without a telescope.
It’s called Proxima Centuari, and is 4.22 light years away.
Or to put it another way, it’s 24,900,000,000,000 miles distant!
It was discovered by a Scot, Robert T. A. Innes (1861-1933) when he was Director of the Union Observatory in South Africa in 1915.
Born in Edinburgh, the eldest of 12 children, Innes was a self-taught astronomer and he moved to South Africa as he realised the clear skies were better suited for astronomy than those over Auld Reekie!
Innes discovered Proxima after observing a faint star fairly close to Alpha Centauri, which until then was believed to be the closest star to the Sun.
He was soon proved correct when accurate measurements were made by another astronomer. No closer star has ever been found.
Innes made several remarkable discoveries, including almost 1600 double stars. He extensively studied the moons of Jupiter and stellar proper motions – the measure of observed changes in the apparent places of stars or other celestial objects in the sky, as seen from the centre of mass of the Solar System.
He was also the first man to record the Daylight Comet of 1910, the brightest comet of the 20th Century. An impact crater on the far side of the Moon is named in his honour.