Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Friday, October 26th.  The sun will rise at 8:12.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 26 minutes, setting at 6:39.   The moon, 3 days before full, will set at 6:05 tomorrow morning.Last week some astronomers announced the discovery of a planet in the star system next door.  Rigel Kentaurus, better known for some reason as Alpha Centauri, only 4.3 light years away, 25 trillion miles, if your odometer goes that high, is the closest star system to the solar system.  I say star system, because it contains 3 stars.  Star A is much like the sun, star B, somewhat larger and dimmer is orange in color.  These two orbit each other at distances the range from Saturn’s distance from the sun to Pluto’s in about 80 years.  The third star is a distant red dwarf, slightly closer to us than the other two and named Proxima Centauri.  The new planet discovered is in essence hugging star B.  Its designation is Alpha Centauri Capital B lower case b (Bb).

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Alpha Centauri A and B. Created using Celestia.

Celestia doesn’t do Alpha Centauri justice.  The A star, to the lower left, is about 1.5 times brighter than the sun.  The B star is half the sun’s brightness.  I wonder how far a planet could be from either star without being in an orbit that would be unstable and be ejected from the system.