
The Universe Within 12.5 Light Years - dluan
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html
======
cryptoz
Many of these stars have planets orbiting them, likely discovered after the
author wrote this page. There are some references to planetary systems, but
few compared to what has been discovered since. Proxima Centauri has at least
one planet orbiting it (in the habitable zone!), for example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri)

Barnard's star also has a planet, contrary to the claim on the page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star#Planetary_sys...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star#Planetary_system)

~~~
oh_sigh
Yup - the page has basically not changed since it was first crawled by
archive.org ~14 years ago:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20060401051712/http://www.atlaso...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060401051712/http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html)

------
tyfon
Playing Elite Dangerous, a lot of these names are quite familiar. I have at
one point held base at Wolf 359 at least :)

Maps like these are so fascinating, anyone know of something similar with
updated planet information?

~~~
gimboland
As soon as I opened that page I had a flashback to playing Elite on my ZX
Spectrum as a 10-year-old. I had to look twice at the map to check it didn't
show Lave and Reidquat.

And that's really weird, because now I look into it, I think there's no way I
saw a map like this in that game. Nor Frontier on the Amiga, as far as I can
see. But when I look at the map, Elite is all I can think about, somehow I
feel certain that's where I've seen it before, even though the evidence
suggests I'm wrong. There's _some_ strong association going on there.
Weeeeeeird.

Edit: I think it might actually just be that I first saw this page so long ago
that it feels the same... As soon as I zoomed out I knew I'd seen it before,
but not for a long long time.

~~~
samplatt
The Map Is Not the Territory. Your memory of the mental model of our local
neighbors that you'd worked out is overriding the actual memories.

Something similar happens when we remember childhood houses. Spaces where
there was a lot of activity seem bigger, because we've mapped those areas
extensively.

~~~
lscharen
Interesting. I’m aware of the common feeling that one’s childhood room seems
“much smaller than I remembered” when it’s visited in adulthood (especially
after a long time away), but I had never heard that feeling tied to level of
time/activity done in that space.

It makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

------
brownbat
Was fun zooming out and comparing stars to the cubic area. If it's a sphere,
we're at about 250 cubic light years per star at both 12.5 lt yr out, and at
20. It heads to around 900 ly^3 per star when you look at everything within
5000 lt yrs.

Makes sense, given that the Milky Way--while 150-200 kly wide--is only about
2000 light years thick.

Of course, we could rapidly zoom much, much farther out, like in this
intergalactic redshift survey:

[https://www.universetoday.com/21914/the-closest-galaxy-to-
th...](https://www.universetoday.com/21914/the-closest-galaxy-to-the-milky-
way/)

Space is incomprehensibly big.

~~~
andrepd
In a similar vein, Scale of the Universe:
[https://htwins.net/scale2/](https://htwins.net/scale2/)

~~~
samoa42
can some1 please please make a html/pwa version of this?

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rwmj
If you had a suitable form of transport, which of these 33 stars would you
visit? Red dwarfs are probably not very interesting places to visit. Sirius or
Procyon (which I'd not heard of before) sound the most interesting:

 _Sirius A,B - Type=A1+DA, Magnitudes=-1.4+8.4, Distance=8.60 ly

This brilliant white star is the brightest star in the night sky and the most
luminous star within 25 light years. Its white dwarf companion was first seen
in 1852, the first white dwarf ever seen. The orbital period is 50 years.

Procyon A,B - Type=F5+DA, Magnitudes=0.4+10.7, Distance=11.41 ly

A brilliant yellow-white star, and the eighth brightest star in the sky. With
twice the diameter of the Sun, Procyon is also the largest star within 25
light years. Procyon is orbited by a white dwarf companion first seen
optically in 1896. The orbital period is 41 years._

------
sllabres
And Voyager 1, the furthest man made object has already completed 0,0023
lightyears from the 4.3 lightyears to the nearest star Alpha Centauri. But its
heading in the wrong direction anyway...

~~~
bArray
I wounder what would need to be done in order for a computer to still work
that far out?

Even removing every single point of failure, statistically the other
components would still fail over time.

I think whichever system you build, it would somehow need to be self-
repairing.

~~~
thombat
Voyager 1 is still functioning, but within 10 years will finally run out of
power. That's going to be the limiting factor even for self-repairing systems:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Future_of_the_probe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Future_of_the_probe)

~~~
nojvek
It’s somewhat a very sobering thought that there is no intelligent life in all
of solar system. The neighbouring stars are too far away for us to visit in
our lifetimes.

Man I feel so alone.

------
JoeDaDude
One of google's experiments presents a very cool visualization of a map of our
stellar neighbors. See:

[http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/](http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/)

------
fbn79
I can remember that star names from the very similar map in Frontiers: Elite
2.

~~~
thom
Ah, the old Ross 154 <-> Barnard's Star milk run.

------
not2b
I guess it is an old site, before Kepler discovered planets around many of
these stars?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_exoplanets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_exoplanets)

------
pinewurst
Note - this seems to be about 20 years old. The nearest stars list is
different now plus so many discovered planets.

------
bpodgursky
My take on this:
[http://uncharted.bpodgursky.com/](http://uncharted.bpodgursky.com/) (out to
75 lys, w/ click-around exploration)

(not super maintained, apologies for visual glitches or stale data)

------
saberdancer
Players of Aurora 4x will recognize those names. Fun fact, new version
developed in C# will be released in March for testing.

------
nlitsme
It would be interesting to have the relative speeds of all these stars
visualized as well.

------
Koshkin
I guess we should feel lucky that there aren't that many stars nearby...

------
adamwong246
I wish these were 3d or animated, to give more perspective.

~~~
fauria
You can try Stellarium, a multi platform software that lets you navigate
instantly across space: [https://stellarium.org/](https://stellarium.org/)

Not sure if you can get as far as this, but certainly worth a try if you are
looking for a more detailed experience.

------
tantalor
[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Wolf_359](https://memory-
alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Wolf_359)

~~~
TwoNineA
Sleep. Sleep, Data.

------
DennisP
3D star maps would be a great application of VR.

~~~
vhold
The closest I know of to a true "map" you can search for things in, put all of
space into any scale, move around in, is SpaceEngine. The VR support is a bit
unwieldy but still impressive. You might want to turn off the procedurally
generated stars and planets if you want a strict map. The procedurally
generated stars are interesting because you can get a sense of density at
various scales.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/314650/SpaceEngine/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/314650/SpaceEngine/)

Titans of Space Plus is probably the most educational space VR program I've
used. It takes you on a guided tour of our solar system and puts everything
into perspective at various scales, including some other stars. But it's not a
map of the stars very much. It does the best job of conveying the relative
sizes of things.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/468820/Titans_of_Space_PL...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/468820/Titans_of_Space_PLUS/)

Universe Sandbox isn't a map either, but it's worth mentioning as as a VR
astronomy program.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/230290/Universe_Sandbox/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/230290/Universe_Sandbox/)

I have not tried this one:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/751110/OVERVIEW_A_Walk_Th...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/751110/OVERVIEW_A_Walk_Through_The_Universe/)

------
lubesGordi
Why 12.5?

~~~
hinkley
That'd be a 25 light year sphere, but then that just leads to the same
question with a different number.

------
lb1lf
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,

And things seem hard or tough,

And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,

And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving
at 900 miles an hour. It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power. Now the sun, and you and me, and
all the stars that we can see, Are moving at a million miles a day, In the
outer spiral arm, at 40, 000 miles an hour, Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars; It's a hundred thousand
light-years side to side; It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years
thick, But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide. We're thirty
thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point, We go 'round every two
hundred million years; And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions In
this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, In all of the directions
it can whiz; As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, Twelve
million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember,
when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your
birth; And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, 'Cause
there's bugger all down here on Earth!

John de Prez / Eric Idle

~~~
Quekid5
... and it's still kind of sad that we (or anything like us) will actually,
realistically never ever venture far enough to even reach the nearest star to
us.

I genuinely think it _is_ sad, but it is what it is. Interstellar space is so
unimaginably huge (insert HGoG reference or excerpt here). At least you won't
be alive to experience the time when the expansion just overtakes everything
and leaves "us" a lone galaxy pondering why here is no light from others like
us.

Hit #subscribe for more depressing space-facts! :|

~~~
pengaru
This doesn't strike me as sad.

What _really_ strikes me as sad is:

Despite understanding how inaccessibly distant alternative _potentially_
habitable planets are, people here on earth seem utterly incapable of living
sustainably on what will very likely be the only planet their species will
ever comfortably inhabit.

~~~
crispinb
_This doesn 't strike me as sad._

Me neither. But it used to. I was a Star Trek (TOS) kid and grew up assuming I
would at least visit planets in adulthood, if not have a modest spacecraft of
my own. Also that the Earth's warring tribes would do away with war & poverty
in some utopian approximately Federationish style.

I'm not sure which seems sillier now.

 _What really strikes me as sad is ...people here on earth seem utterly
incapable of living sustainably_

That was my post Star Trek dreams phase, which probably lasted through much of
my 30's.

Beyond that I've come to accept that it was never biologically plausible that
a fairly clever social primate species would (magically?) be able to extend
its social/cognitive/conative/affective capacities, evolved to negotiate small
group survival and interaction, to the competent management of an entire
biosphere.

~~~
nkrisc
Also consider that we, the Earthbound humans, will probably never live
comfortably in space, or low gravity environments. We're just not built for it
and there are many physiological issues we'd face.

That of course doesn't mean humans never will, future generations, should they
go to space, will adapt and evolve to their new environments, whether
naturally or through deliberate selection. You and I, we never will. But our
descendants might.

~~~
crispinb
I suspect if our 'civilisation' continued long enough to do serious manned
space exploration, low gravity is an issue we'd find a technical fix for. Your
guess is as good as mine though.

It's pretty clear however that we're unlikely to make it that far.

------
proc0
[Fermi Paradox Intensifies]

