The unassuming star centered in this sky view [ http://skyview.gsfc…] will one day be our next door [ http://www.bigear.o…] stellar neighbor [ http://www.astro.wi…]. The faint 9th magnitude red dwarf [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…], currently 63 light-years away [ http://zebu.uoregon…] in the constellation Ophiucus [ http://www.astro.wi…Ophiuchus.html ], was recently discovered to be approaching our Solar System. Known in catalogs of nearby stars [ http://tarkus.pha.j…] as Gliese 710 it is predicted to come within 1 light-year of the Sun ... a 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://cass.jsc.nas…] was discovered by researchers [ http://www.newscien…] 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://www.bigear.o…] stellar neighbor [ http://www.astro.wi…]. The faint 9th magnitude red dwarf [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…], currently 63 light-years away [ http://zebu.uoregon…] in the constellation Ophiucus [ http://www.astro.wi…Ophiuchus.html ], was recently discovered to be approaching our Solar System. Known in catalogs of nearby stars [ http://tarkus.pha.j…] as Gliese 710 it is predicted to come within 1 light-year of the Sun ... a 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://cass.jsc.nas…] was discovered by researchers [ http://www.newscien…] 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).
