Alpha centauri Definition and 30 Threads

I finally got around to watching the movie "Avatar", which takes place in the Alpha Centauri system. I was thinking that a great little scene between the 2 main characters (i.e., the paraplegic Earthling and the Centauri woman) would have been looking up at the night sky and seeing Sol as a...

I sometimes get surprised by things that do not seem to exist in this world. For example, as far as I know, nobody has ever, during the entire history of photography, made a photographic time-lapse of lunar libration. There are plenty of computer renderings, but no photographic time-lapse...

The idea for the mission is that if we built a spacecraft small enough, we could push it with laser(s) to Alpha Centuri within a resonable amount of time, and once there it could send us back images of the star/planets. My question is, would a tiny spacecraft even able to transmit the data...

In October 2012, astronomers announced the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B. However, three years later, they concluded that it probably doesn’t exist. In 2013, astronomers also detected another possible exoplanet, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet. As of today, no...

(No, this is not homework assignment. This is something I'm curious about.) Assume an astronaut were to travel from Earth to Alpha Centauri (about 4.37 light years distance) in a rocket. During the first half of the distance the rocket constantly accelerates at a comfortable 9.8 m/s2. At the...

Can the journey be completed within the lifetime of a human adult? Assuming we have got around little problems like having an adequate form of propulsion, shielding from radiation, and avoiding deadly collisions with milligram sized dust particles. Let's say our engines can provide constant...

Hello, I am trying to write a scene- story is set a bit in the future in which theoretically, using nuclear as a fuel is a possibility in space travel. The problem I'm trying to solve right now is if a probe is traveling to Alpha centauri (4.37) light years from the sun and the probe...

They say that the light that reaches us from Alpha Centauri left that star 4 years ago but this assumes that both alpha centauri and the Earth are not moving relative to each other. In face Alpha Centauri s approaching us at about 10% of the speed of light. By the Lorenz equations for time...

I want to know what mathematical tools I would use in the event that we have the right technology. So far I have only calculated the distance to Alpha Centauri using parallax. I need any other tool: hypothetical speeds of ships, trigonometry, vectors, trajectories, any tool that is necessary...

Hello, I am in the process of writing space based sci fi novella, I made a few posts last year and earlier this year regarding different aspects of the ship and crew. If anyone is interested, I wanted to concentrate on the fusion engine of the ship itself and hopefully come up with a feasible...

A new analysis suggests that the orbit of the possible planet around Alpha Centauri B is oriented in such a way that the planet is only 1 to 3 times as massive as Earth. Link: Science.

So Alpha Centauri is about 4.37 lightyears from earth, but that's in Earth's frame of reference, if you could build a spaceship to go, say 9/10c relative to Earth how long would it take to get to alpha centauri, because then space-time would be warped and therefore it would no longer be 4.37...

From here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/10/16/alpha-centauri-has-a-planet/

Am I going to absorb 4 years of light data from Alpha Centauri or is it just going massively blueshift?

I'm writing a science fiction story and have a basic understanding of theoretical propulsion systems (ramjets, ion drives, solar sails, etc.). But I'm also trying to make my story plausible. So, that means no faster-than-light travel, infinite energy sources, artificial gravity generators, etc...

Can this be done feasibly (with current/near term emerging technologies and sub-trillion dollar budget)? Assuming that the human race survives the 21st century, I think we'll have the resources for a multi-decade unmanned flyby mission to Alpha Centauri even if technology shows little progress...

I am writing a science fiction book that includes the idea of a planet orbiting within the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A and I'm hoping this is a good place to get some questions answered. It's science fiction, so I'm perfectly fine with stretching the limits of possibility, here, just...

I have been reading about the star system on wiki and noticed that one of the Alpha Centauri stars could in theory have a terrestrial planet in the goldilocks region. I also came to know that its orbit would only be stable for 250 million years. Given that these stars have been around for a few...

Suppose you wanted to reach Alpha Centauri in 100 years. a. How fast would you have to go, in km/hr3 b. How many times faster is the speed you found in (a) than the speeds ofour fastest current spacecraft (around 50,000 km/hr)?

Hello, I'm new on this forum and I hope I will blend in nicely. I happen to have a couple of questions on the Alpha Centauri star in the constellation of Centaurus. I know the distance between this star and our milk way is huge, but suppose one could travel at the speed of light X 25, would...

I Have read a lot recently about Alpha centuri having a planet that's identical to earth. i qquote On January 15, 2010, a team of astronomers released the results of computer simulations indicating that kilometer-size planetesimals can form and accrete into rocky Earth-size planets around...

Should we send an interstellar (unmanned) probe to Alpha Centauri? Would it be much more expensive than a manned mission to Mars? According to Wikipedia, velocities as high as 0.10c are possible with hydrogen bombs. That means that ~40 years flight time to the nearest star would be possible...

A rocket is preparing for journey from Earth to Alpha Centauri. The Earth and Alpha Centauri systems are at rest with each other and have syncronized their clocks to time t=0. ________E__________________________________________________A (distance: 4 ly) ________R Rocket speed is known...

is Alpha Centauri, the closes star to the solar system?

Say I travel to Alpha Centauri (4.35 light-years from the Sun) AND back to Earth at 50 percent of speed of light. How much time would the clock on my spaceship and a clock on Earth record me to have taken?

An article about the likely magnitudes and feasibility of terrestrial sized rocky planets orbiting in the habitable zones in the Alpha Centauri system: (link removed)AA http://www.publishedauthors.net/aa_spaceagent/

Alright, so I'm new here and don't really know the ropes. This question could go either in Astronomy, or here; but here is better since what I need involves an equation. So first a little about me: I'm new to this forum, and suck at maths. That is all. So maybe some clever mathematician...

This gigantic thing here called the Centauri Princess, can it be built in the next few hundred years? http://www.astroscience.org/abdul-ahad/firstarktoalphacentauri.htm That would be the greatest engineering achievement in all human history...

Abdul Ahad wrote: "A Tiny Ray of Hope in the Eternal Darkness... Successfully locating an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone around one of the two principal 'suns' of the Alpha Centauri system will surely rank as one of the greatest discoveries in the entire history of science. Such...

Using a VASIMR rocket, 1320 years of voyage are needed Using an Orion drive, the duration of the voyage is 132 years