pelican-alchemy/feeds/planetary-stuff.atom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><title>Pelican Alchemy - Planetary Stuff</title><link href="https://nairobilug.github.io/pelican-alchemy/" rel="alternate"></link><link href="https://nairobilug.github.io/pelican-alchemy/feeds/planetary-stuff.atom.xml" rel="self"></link><id>https://nairobilug.github.io/pelican-alchemy/</id><updated>2001-01-01T09:00:00+03:00</updated><subtitle>A magical ✨ Pelican theme</subtitle><entry><title>Alpha Centauri</title><link href="https://nairobilug.github.io/pelican-alchemy/posts/alpha-centauri.html" rel="alternate"></link><published>2001-01-01T09:00:00+03:00</published><updated>2001-01-01T09:00:00+03:00</updated><author><name>Wikipedia</name></author><id>tag:nairobilug.github.io,2001-01-01:/pelican-alchemy/posts/alpha-centauri.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;The sun's closest stellar neighbors are three stars in the Alpha Centauri system. The two main stars are Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, which form a binary pair. The third star is Proxima Centauri.&lt;/p&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alpha Centauri&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;α Centauri&lt;/strong&gt;, abbreviated &lt;strong&gt;Alpha Cen&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;α Cen&lt;/strong&gt;) is the &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs" title="List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs"&gt;closest&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system" title="Star system"&gt;star system&lt;/a&gt; to the &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System" title="Solar System"&gt;Solar System&lt;/a&gt; at a distance of 4.37 &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year" title="Light-year"&gt;light-years&lt;/a&gt; (1.34 &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec" title="Parsec"&gt;pc&lt;/a&gt;). It consists of three stars: the &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star" title="Binary star"&gt;pair&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Alpha Centauri A&lt;/strong&gt; (also named &lt;strong&gt;Rigil Kentaurus&lt;/strong&gt;) and &lt;strong&gt;Alpha Centauri B&lt;/strong&gt; together with a small and faint &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf" title="Red dwarf"&gt;red dwarf&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Alpha Centauri C&lt;/strong&gt; (also named &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri" title="Proxima Centauri"&gt;Proxima Centauri&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;), that may be gravitationally bound to the other two. To the unaided eye, the two main components appear as a single point of light with an apparent &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_magnitude" title="Visual magnitude"&gt;visual magnitude&lt;/a&gt; of −0.27, forming the brightest &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star" title="Star"&gt;star&lt;/a&gt; in the southern &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation" title="Constellation"&gt;constellation&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurus" title="Centaurus"&gt;Centaurus&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_brightest_stars" title="List of brightest stars"&gt;third-brightest&lt;/a&gt; star in the night sky, outshone only by &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius" title="Sirius"&gt;Sirius&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canopus" title="Canopus"&gt;Canopus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="Alpha Centauri" class="img-fluid" src="https://nairobilug.github.io/pelican-alchemy/images/alpha-centauri.jpg" title="Alpha Centauri"/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Alpha Centauri A (α Cen A) has 110 percent of the mass and 151.9 percent of the luminosity of the &lt;a href="/wiki/Sun" title="Sun"&gt;Sun&lt;/a&gt;, and Alpha Centauri B (α Cen B) is smaller and cooler, at 90.7 percent of the Sun's mass and 44.5 percent of its visual luminosity. During the pair's 79.91-year orbit about a common centre, the distance between them varies from about that between &lt;a href="/wiki/Pluto" title="Pluto"&gt;Pluto&lt;/a&gt; and the Sun to that between &lt;a href="/wiki/Saturn" title="Saturn"&gt;Saturn&lt;/a&gt; and the Sun.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Proxima Centauri (α Cen C) is at the slightly smaller distance of 1.29 parsecs or 4.24 light years from the Sun, making it the closest star to the Sun, even though it is not visible to the naked eye. The separation of Proxima from Alpha Centauri AB is about 0.06 parsecs, 0.2 light years or 15,000 &lt;a href="/wiki/Astronomical_unit" title="Astronomical unit"&gt;astronomical units&lt;/a&gt; (AU), equivalent to 500 times the size of &lt;a href="/wiki/Neptune" title="Neptune"&gt;Neptune&lt;/a&gt;'s orbit. &lt;a href="/wiki/Proxima_b" title="Proxima b"&gt;Proxima b&lt;/a&gt;, an &lt;a href="/wiki/Terrestrial_planet" title="Terrestrial planet"&gt;Earth-sized&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="/wiki/Exoplanet" title="Exoplanet"&gt;exoplanet&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href="/wiki/Habitable_zone" title="Habitable zone"&gt;habitable zone&lt;/a&gt; of Proxima Centauri, has been detected and may be a destination of future interstellar spacecraft, including a fleet of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href="/wiki/StarChip_(spacecraft)" title="StarChip (spacecraft)"&gt;StarChip&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; spacecraft currently being developed for a flyby mission by the &lt;a href="/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot" title="Breakthrough Starshot"&gt;Breakthrough Starshot&lt;/a&gt; project.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote class="blockquote"&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri"&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;</content><category term="Planetary Stuff"></category><category term="stars"></category><category term="planets"></category><category term="g-type"></category></entry></feed>