Posted on by Evan Gough

Do We Now Have an Accurate Map of Nearby Stars?

This image shows the bright stars within 15 parsecs of the Sun. If red dwarfs and brown dwarfs were included, there would be far more stars. But those stars are difficult to spot. Have we found all of them yet? Image Credit: By Andrew Z. Colvin - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14359465

If the Sun has a stellar neighbourhood, it can be usefully defined as a 20 parsec (65 light-years) sphere centred on our star. Astronomers have been actively cataloguing the stellar population in the neighbourhood for decades, but it hasn’t been easy since many stars are small and dim.

Even with all of the challenges inherent in the effort, astronomers have made steady progress. Do we now have a complete catalogue?

Continue reading “Do We Now Have an Accurate Map of Nearby Stars?”