Alpha Centauri (Daniel Stern)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Centaurus (Cen) · Contains: Alpha Centauri · Bungula (α1 Cen) · HD128016 · HD128620 · HD128621 · Proksima Kentavra · The star Rigil Kentaurus · The star α2 Cen · Toliman · alf Cen

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Alpha Centauri

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Alpha Centauri

A member of my local astronomy club, who is involved in a lot of outreach activities, asked that I image Alpha Centauri so he could use it in his work. It turned out to be a more challenging project than I originally thought. It’s located just over four light-years away, making it the closest known star system to the Sun. Its proximity has fueled the imagination of many, making it a prime target for interstellar travel stories piquing the interest of those new to astronomy. It consists of three stars: Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A and B form a binary pair, with Alpha Centauri A being slightly larger and brighter than the Sun, and Alpha Centauri B being a bit smaller and cooler. These two stars orbit each other closely, taking about 80 years to complete one orbit.Proxima Centauri, on the other hand, is a much smaller and cooler red dwarf star that orbits the Alpha Centauri AB pair at a much greater distance. Despite its proximity to the other two stars, Proxima Centauri is not gravitationally bound to them and is actually the closest of the three stars to the Sun.

Original
Final
B

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9856355
PixInsight job	K2NVHIBE41ZVZPVHN0AIKVTTC20OTUAK
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	14h39m25s.423
RA (top/left)	14h42m00s.279
RA (top/right)	14h36m50s.820
RA (bottom/right)	14h36m47s.469
RA (bottom/left)	14h42m03s.875

Dec (center)	-60°49′57″.94
Dec (top/left)	-60°30′45″.00
Dec (top/right)	-60°30′48″.75
Dec (bottom/right)	-61°08′58″.81
Dec (bottom/left)	-61°08′55″.27

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