The dream of interstellar travel is becoming increasingly real, and Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth, is at ...

Astronomers have made an exciting discovery—a new Earth-like exoplanet, Proxima b, located in the Alpha Centauri system. This ...

Only the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system, about 4 light-years away, are closer. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles.

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star just 4.2 light years from Earth. Alpha Centauri consists of two larger stars around 4.37 light years from Earth.

Alpha Centauri A and B are both significantly larger, so their habitable zones will be further out -- hopefully far enough to allow Project Blue a chance for successful direct visible-spectrum ...

This would make potential Alpha Centauri objects—if they really are somewhere in there—difficult to observe. Though, it wouldn’t be impossible.

Project Blue is a space science mission utilizing new developments in advanced optical telescope design to discover potentially habitable exoplanets in Earth’s neighboring star system, Alpha ...

Alpha Centauri is racing toward us at 0.007 light-years per century (80,000 kilometers per hour) and will be closest 28,000 years from now, when it will be 3.2 light-years from Earth.

Compared to the sun, Alpha Centauri A is of the same stellar type, G2, and slightly bigger, while Alpha Centauri B, a K1-type star, is slightly smaller.

Alpha Centauri is about 4.4 light-years (roughly 25 trillion miles, or 40 trillion kilometers) from Earth and is home to three separate stars.

"I think that we will reach the Alpha Centauri system, with small probes launching in the decade of the 2040s, and thus arriving in the 2060s," Eubanks said.