The unassuming star centered in this sky view [
http://skyview.gsfc…] will one day be our next door [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] stellar neighbor. The faint 9th magnitude red dwarf [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…], currently 63 light-years away in the constellation Ophiucus [
http://www.seds.org…], was recently discovered to be approaching our Solar System. Known in catalogs of nearby stars [
http://cdsweb.u-str…] as Gliese (Gl) 710 it is predicted to come within nearly 1 light-year of the Sun ... about 1.5 million years from now. At that distance this star, presently much too faint to be seen [
http://liftoff.msfc…] by the naked eye, will blaze at 0.6 magnitude - rivaling the apparent brightness of the mighty red giant Antares [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…]. Ultimately Gliese 710 poses no direct collision danger itself although its gravitational influence will likely scatter comets out of the Solar System's reservoir, the Oort cloud [
http://www.windows.…Oort_cloud.html ], sending some inbound. This future stellar encounter [
http://adsabs.harva…nph-bib_query?bibcod e=1999AJ....117.1042 G&db_key=AST&high=3a f6c03e8102908 ] was discovered by researchers Joan Garcia-Sanchez and Robert Preston (JPL [
http://www.jpl.nasa…]), and collaborators while studying stars in the solar neighborhood [
http://www.clockwk.…] using data from the Hipparcos Astrometry Satellite [
http://astro.estec.…hipparcos.html ]. The star field shown is based on the Palomar Digitized Sky Survey [
http://www-gsss.sts…] and is 1/4 degree wide (about half the diameter of the full moon).
Explanation
The unassuming star centered in this sky view [
http://skyview.gsfc…] will one day be our next door [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] stellar neighbor. The faint 9th magnitude red dwarf [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…], currently 63 light-years away in the constellation Ophiucus [
http://www.seds.org…], was recently discovered to be approaching our Solar System. Known in catalogs of nearby stars [
http://cdsweb.u-str…] as Gliese (Gl) 710 it is predicted to come within nearly 1 light-year of the Sun ... about 1.5 million years from now. At that distance this star, presently much too faint to be seen [
http://liftoff.msfc…] by the naked eye, will blaze at 0.6 magnitude - rivaling the apparent brightness of the mighty red giant Antares [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…]. Ultimately Gliese 710 poses no direct collision danger itself although its gravitational influence will likely scatter comets out of the Solar System's reservoir, the Oort cloud [
http://www.windows.…Oort_cloud.html ], sending some inbound. This future stellar encounter [
http://adsabs.harva…nph-bib_query?bibcod e=1999AJ....117.1042 G&db_key=AST&high=3a f6c03e8102908 ] was discovered by researchers Joan Garcia-Sanchez and Robert Preston (JPL [
http://www.jpl.nasa…]), and collaborators while studying stars in the solar neighborhood [
http://www.clockwk.…] using data from the Hipparcos Astrometry Satellite [
http://astro.estec.…hipparcos.html ]. The star field shown is based on the Palomar Digitized Sky Survey [
http://www-gsss.sts…] and is 1/4 degree wide (about half the diameter of the full moon).
Explanation
