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An eclipsing binary star is a binary star system in which the orbital plane of the two stars lies so nearly in the line of sight of the observer that the components undergo mutual eclipses. [20] In the case where the binary is also a spectroscopic binary and the parallax of the system is known, the binary is quite valuable for stellar analysis.
The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs (4.2 light-years) from the Sun: from that distance, the gap between the Earth and the Sun spans slightly less than 1 / 3600 of one degree of view. [2]
The relative proximity of the two stars combined with the 6.5 billion kilometer (about 43 AU) distance of the spacecraft from Earth yielded a discernible parallax of arcminutes, allowing the parallax to be seen visually without instrumentation. [15] Parallax of Proxima Centauri as observed from New Horizons and Earth. [16]
The Solar System, and the other stars/dwarfs listed here, are currently moving within (or near) the Local Interstellar Cloud, roughly 30 light-years (9.2 pc) across. The Local Interstellar Cloud is, in turn, contained inside the Local Bubble , a cavity in the interstellar medium about 300 light-years (92.0 pc ) across.
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Gamma Virginis is a binary star, consisting of two stars of nearly equal apparent magnitudes 3.65 and 3.56, and of spectral type F0V. [2] With an orbital period of 168.93 years, [5] [6] it was an easy object for amateur astronomers until the beginning of the 1990s, but in 2011 the smaller apparent distance between the stars requires a larger telescope or special techniques such as speckle ...
Distance measures are used in physical cosmology to give a natural notion of the distance between two objects or events in the universe.They are often used to tie some observable quantity (such as the luminosity of a distant quasar, the redshift of a distant galaxy, or the angular size of the acoustic peaks in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum) to another quantity that is ...