Stellar Neighborhood
Earth’s closest neighboring stars §
This visualization shows our stellar neighbors, the 100 closest known star systems to earth, starting with Proxima Centauri. The furthest star shown here is LHS 3003, at about 21.4 light-years. The sphere containing these nearby stars represents just one billionth of the volume of the Milky Way, making it a very local neighborhood indeed.
Drag the visualization to adjust the view, which will slowly rotate if left alone.
Doesn’t work on mobile :(
Legend §
- The yellow star at the center is Sol, our sun.
- The blue circle is the celestial equator drawn at a radius of 22 light-years.
- The ♈ is the direction of the vernal equinox, which is the zero point of the right ascension of a star.
- Each black dot is a star or star system of multiple stars, with a line drawn down to the equatorial plane to show its relative position.
- The projection is orthographic.
Some stars are identified by their common name, such as Barnard’s Star, Altair, and Procyon. Others such as ε Erdani are identified by the constellation and their rough relative brightness, using the Bayer designation. Fainter stars were discovered more recently, such as stars with the GJ designation. The most recently discovered stars have 2MA designations, based on observations performed from 1997-2001.
All of this data is derived from RECONS (Research Consortium On Nearby Stars), in particular the 100 nearest star systems table. While most of these stars have been known for a long time due to their proximity, some of them first had their parallax (and thus distance from Earth) measured precisely by RECON.