Lecture 14 notes: Solar Neighborhood

Quick aside:

The distance between the Earth and the nearest star, the Sun, is 1 AU. This is around 150,000,000 kilometers (93,000,000 miles).

The next nearest star, Proxima Centari, is 870,000 times farther away (1.3 parsec).

Analogy: If the Sun/Earth is across the classrom, then the Sun/Proxima Centauri is from Flagstaff to London.

Even the closest stars are far, far away.

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