How far is the nearest star and its name and can it be reached by space traveling?

Question

is it possible to go there

Answer 1

At the moment the nearest star of the trinary system of Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri A and B is Proxima Centauri. It is 4,26 light years away (25 trillion miles away) and the other two stars in the system are 4.39 light-years distant (about 25.8 trillion miles or 277,600 AU).

The two orbit one another elliptically, approaching as close as 11.2 astronomical units (2×10^−4 ly) and receding to 35.6 AU (6×10^−4 ly), with a period of just under 80 years.

These two stars are about 5 to 6 billion years old. The red dwarf Proxima Centauri is about 13,000 astronomical units away from Alpha Centauri (1 ly = 63,241 AU, hence this is 0.21 ly, about 1/20 of the distance between Alpha Centauri and the Sun) and may be in orbit about it, with a period on the order of 500,000 years or more.

As they orbit one another, which is nearest to us may well change periodically in the process.

More interestingly, Barnard's Star currently 5,96 light years away and the 4th nearest to us, is heading our way. Its velocity relative to the Sun is between 139.7 and 142.7 km/s. In fact, Barnard's Star is approaching the Sun so rapidly that it will be the nearest star around AD 11,800, at a distance of 3.8 light-years.

But these are all beyond the scope of manned space flight at present. To carry food, oxygen and clothing for what might be several hundreds of generations who live and die aboard the ship is far too big a payload for current technology to handle, and the psychological problems for the passengers who never live to see the destination would be immense.

I think this is only feasible if we use cryogenics capable of resuscitating the first generation of passengers once the ship arrives and the ship is on autopilot from the moment it leaves earth.

Answer 2

Oops. Oops. I don't think that this is the question you meant to ask.

But the answer to the question you asked is:

The nearest star is our Sun.
It is 93 Million miles away from the Earth on average. Earth's orbit around the Sun is not a perfect circle, rather it is eliptical.

No. It cannot be (wouldn't want to be) reached by space travel. The Sun, and almost all other stars are exceedingly hot and emit huge amounts of radiation including everything from X Rays to Gamma Rays. Here on Earth, we are shielded from the majority of those by our atmosphere. In space flight, however, there would be no protection and any craft would be incinerated or cooked by radiation before it ever came close to the surface of the Sun, or any other star.

Now, I suspect the question you meant to ask was how far away is the nearest star other than our Sun? The nearest star other than the Sun is Proxima Centauri and it is 4.24 Light Years away. Of the twenty nearest stars, the 20th is 11.8 Light Years away to give you some idea of the distances involved. You would not wish to go to those stars either, however, there may be planets around those stars (similar to planets around our sun) which might be nice to visit, except fot the huge, huge distances involved. Now, those are the nearest stars. Other stars in the Milky Way Galaxy range from 20 to 750 Light (Years, or more) away since the Milky Way is a disk about 1500 Light Years in diameter and possibly 5 to 10 Light Years thick.

Other galaxies exist which are from 0.17 to 40 million Light Years away (and more, because we don't really know how many there are). Each of those galaxies are just filled with stars (hundreds of billions of them). So, your question is hopefully answered, only, don't plan on visiting Stars...just figure on visiting planets, or maybe moons of those planets...and do it with a remote controlled mechanical probe that might arrive there sometime way-way in the distant future, say several hundred million years from now.

Answer 3

The nearest star to the planet earth is a star called Sol, and is less than one lightyear away. It could definitely be reached by space travelling. By the way, it's the center of our solar system. This is by far the best answer, even though it's not what you're looking for.

Answer 4

The nearest is 4 Light years away

Answer 5

Proxima Centauri is about 4.3 light years away from Earth. At our rate of travel now, it would only take a ship a couple thousand years to get there. Propulsion type engines are not gonna get the job done if we are ever to visit anything farther away than the moon.

Answer 6

Its about 4.3 light years away and is called Proxima Centauri. It is possible to go there but with our existing technology it would take several thousand years. It has a small dim red sun so it would be gloomy and there is a planet that glows red due to internal heating. So nowhere to live.

Answer 7

The first Television broadcast was from the 1936 Olympics, so a little over 70 light years.

Answer 8

the nearest star besides the sun, of course, is Alpha Centauri. it's about 4 lightyears away, afaik.

it wouldn't be possible to get there with present day technology. right now we are too slow so it wouldn't make any sense and if i'm not mistaken, humans would get iradiated.

Answer 9

Well our nearest star is the Sun.Nobody will be going there.The Sun is about 93,000,000 miles from earth

Answer 10

Besides our sun, I think the nearest star is called Alpha Centari, but I don't know how far away it is.