October 17, 2012, NASA announced the discovery of a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, the second brightest star in the trinary (ternary or 3-component) system. The one glaring dot holds both Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. Risinger (CC BY 3.0), via The star nearest Earth now has a known planet Photograph of Alpha Centauri with more distant stars of the Milky Way in the background. In the background is our own sun as a bright star in their night sky. Artist’s rendition of the Alpha Centauri system with the newly discovered planet. So, you see, in one sense Alpha Centauri really is the star nearest Earth. But Proxima is also a part of the Alpha Centauri system. Proxima is not a star that we can see in the night sky. Other purists will likely complain that Proxima Centauri is closer than “Alpha Centauri.” They would also be right, but only in a sense.
So, even though the star nearest to the Earth is our sun, literally, it is not so in the everyday sense of common language. But in the vernacular, “star” usually refers to those tiny points of light in the night sky-not the daytime. Okay, they’re right, but only in one sense. Someone is getting “literal” on me and declaring that the star “nearest” Earth is our own sun.
The star nearest Earth? Alpha Centauri? I can hear it now. A photograph of the night sky showing Alpha Centauri A&B (top left), Beta Centauri (mid-right), and Proxima Centauri (within red circle).
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