Question #83495
1 Answer
The Sun is the closest star to Earth, about 93 million miles away. The Sun’s nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, is actually a triple-star system.
SDSS J122952.66+112227.8, a bright bluish blob in the galaxy IC 3418 is the farthest observed.
Explanation:
The Sun is the closest star to Earth, about 93 million miles away. The Sun’s nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, is actually a triple-star system — three stars bound together by gravity. Alpha Centauri A and B are two bright, closely orbiting stars with a distant, dim companion, Proxima Centauri.
Proxima Centauri alone claims the honor of being our true nearest stellar neighbor at only 4.24 light years away.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/far-closest-star/
Youichi Ohyama (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) and Ananda Hota (UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, India) might have an answer. Using optical and ultraviolet observations from several instruments, the duo has pinpointed what might be the farthest star spectroscopically observed — at a dizzying 55 million light-years away.
The object is a compact source illustriously named SDSS J122952.66+112227.8, a bright bluish blob in the clumpy, 55,000-light-year-long gas tail of the galaxy IC 3418.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/the-most-distant-star-everseen/
