Newly-Discovered Star May Be Third-Closest

This is a size comparison of new star (red sphere on left) and the Sun. The radius of the new star is just 1/7 that of the Sun. "SO25300.5+165258" has only about seven percent of the mass of the Sun, and it is 300,000 times fainter. The star's feeble glow is the reason why it has not been seen until now, despite being relatively close.

The local celestial neighborhood just got more crowded with a discovery of a star that may be the third closest to the Sun. The star, "SO25300.5+165258," is a faint red dwarf star estimated to be about 7.8 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Aries.

"Our new stellar neighbor is a pleasant surprise, since we weren't looking for it," said Dr. Bonnard Teegarden, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Teegarden is lead author of a paper announcing the discovery to be published by the Astrophysical Journal. This work has been done in close collaboration with Dr. Steven Pravdo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

If its distance estimate is confirmed, the newfound star will be the Sun's third-closest stellar neighbor, slightly farther than the Alpha Centauri system, actually a group of three stars a bit more than four light-years away, and Barnard's star, about six light-years away. One light-year is almost six trillion miles, or nearly 9.5 trillion kilometers.

For more on the newly discovered star, visit: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0520newstar.html