The stars we see from Earth are not necessarily those closest to our planet; they are simply the brightest. In fact, most of the stars visible in the night sky lay far outside our solar neighborhood. Because a star’s brightness does not indicate its distance, scientists have begun using a novel method of tracking stellar motion to learn which stars are truly “local.”

While stars appear fixed in the sky, they are actually in constant motion. If two stars in a patch of sky are traveling at the same speed, the closer star will travel through more of the observer’s field of view. This makes it appear to be moving faster than the more distant star.  Using images of the same parts of the sky taken 50 years apart, scientists have been able to identify nearby stars by picking out those with the largest apparent motions. In recent years, scientists have catalogued almost 62,000 stars within 300 light-years of the Sun, radically altering the map of our solar neighborhood.

To view and learn more about nearby stars, take this interactive tour of the Milky Way Galaxy. It uses data from the Digital Universe Project, a collaboration of NASA and the American Museum of Natural History, to create an accurate three-dimensional map of the visible Universe. The Digital Universe, which includes dozens of datasets that are constantly updated, is free to download. 

Educator Resources for "Nearby Stars"