History UsefulNotes / LocalStars

* In ''Literature/FoundationAndEarth'', the heroes visit the planet Aurora, which was partially terraformed by the Empire to accommodate the people of Earth as it became radioactive. At the time of their visit, Aurora was completely devoid of human life. As established in Asimov'e earlier ''Robot'' stories, Aurora orbits Tau Ceti.

While the system itself is of not much interest, what is remarkable of Scholz's Star is its trajectory. Scientists have calculated that around 70,000 years ago, the pair passed by the Solar System at a distance of 120,000 AU at closest approach, which not only made it the closest star system at the time, but was close enough to disrupt the Oort Cloud and send comets spiraling inward. It's estimated that these perturbed comets will take roughly 2 million years to reach the inner parts of the Solar System, which could be bad news for Earth as it may enter another bombardment period not seen since the Late Heavy Bombardment nearly 4 billion years ago.

This page is devoted to those stars within 50 light-years of UsefulNotes/TheSolarSystem. Many of these stars are red dwarfs[[note]]Yes, dwarfs, not dwarves. The only available plural for "dwarf" was "dwarfs" until Creator/JRRTolkien came along in the middle of the 20th century. See, for example, ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs''.[[/note]]; only the red dwarfs closest to Sol (less than 12 ly) are listed here. Except the Luyten's star, Gliese 581, and TRAPPIST-1, which are important, and YZ Ceti due to its proximity to the famous Tau Ceti.

* Setting of the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Spock's Brain."

* In "Evacuate Earth", a Magazine/NationalGeographic Channel special, an OrionDrive-powered starship takes 250,000 survivors to a planet orbiting Barnard's Star after Earth and the solar system are destroyed by the GravityScrew of a passing neutron star.

* Barnard's Star tends to appear nor Sol in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''. Occasionally habitable planets will be orbiting it.

* Barnard's Star tends to appear nor Sol in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''. Occasionally habitable planets will be orbiting it.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', the Trappist system is one of a handful of real-life stars focily-spawned somewhere in the galoaxy. It can contain up to three small to medium-sized habitable worlds of various biomes - an exceptionally large number that's unlikely to be found anywhere else in the galaxy.

* Wiki/SCPFoundation: One of the planets affected by [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3426 SCP-3426]] is TRAPPIST-1f, an Earth-like planet covered in a thick envelope of water vapor. It was home to a civilization very similar to humanity, right down to having their own analogue of the SCP Foundation, but eventually fell prey to a RealityIsOutToLunch scenario and was wiped out.

This page is devoted to those stars within 50 light-years of UsefulNotes/TheSolarSystem. Many of these stars are red dwarfs[[note]]Yes, dwarfs, not dwarves. The only available plural for "dwarf" was "dwarfs" until Creator/JRRTolkien came along in the middle of the 20th century. See, for example, ''Disney/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs''.[[/note]]; only the red dwarfs closest to Sol (less than 12 ly) are listed here. Except the Luyten's star, Gliese 581, and TRAPPIST-1, which are important, and YZ Ceti due to its proximity to the famous Tau Ceti.

* Setting of, naturally, ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri.'' In the universe of the game, two planets are known to orbit Alpha Centauri A: a Mercury-like inner planet named Eurytion, and the outer, Earth-like planet Chiron (known in game simply as "Planet"). Chiron is fittingly named for the greatest of the mythical Centaurs and one of the only two good ones (and is thus a likely name for any ''actual'' Earth-like planet in the system), and has two moons (Nessus and Pholus), also named after Centaurs (Pholus being the other good and wise Centaur, Nessus being the most prominent nasty one). Alpha Centauri B, which does not, in the game, appear to have any planets of its own,[[note]]Recall that ''SMAC'' came out in early ''1999'', when only ''six'' exoplanets were known to exist in the entire Universe--and one of which was seriously questioned--and that Alpha Centauri [=Bb=] was only discovered in 2012[[/note]] is known by the locals as "Hercules" (who killed many Centaurs) as it greatly affects Chiron's native life when it enters perihelion.

* In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', the inventor of the space warp is known as "Zephram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri."

* Alpha Centauri tends to appear near Sol in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''. All three stars in the system (including Proxima, labelled as "Alpha Centauri C") are part of the system, each with their own set of planets. In an obvious ShoutOut to, well, just about everything listed above, the system will usually contain at least one Earth-like habitable planet.

* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'' series, Earth's sun is in the "Sirius sector", since Sirius is the brightest star in our neck of the woods.

* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's Literature/{{Foundation}} series, they've forgotten which world humans originally came from. 61 Cygni is suggested as a possible site for the origin of humanity.

An (of course) red dwarf that it's at just 1.2 light-years away from Procyon, close enough to perturb hypothetical Oort clouds that both stars could have sending comets to those regions nearby to both stars and for the latter to give a light show from the former, shining as bright as Venus from Earth. This star seems to be a quiet one not prone to flares and it's conspicuous as it has four planets orbiting it, most notably a Super-Earth on the habitable zone that ranks among the closest and best candidate planets to support life as we know it --unfortunately as per Ross 128 we know little more of it than its orbit, minimum mass, and the stellar flux it receives.

This page is devoted to those stars within 50 light-years of UsefulNotes/TheSolarSystem. Many of these stars are red dwarfs[[note]]Yes, dwarfs, not dwarves. The only available plural for "dwarf" was "dwarfs" until Creator/JRRTolkien came along in the middle of the 20th century. See, for example, ''Disney/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs''.[[/note]]; only the red dwarfs closest to Sol (less than 12 ly) are listed here. Except Gliese 581 and TRAPPIST-1, which are important, and YZ Ceti due to its proximity to the famous Tau Ceti.

* ''Disney/TreasurePlanet'' mentions the Procyon Armada. There was a video game based on the movie named ''VideoGame/TreasurePlanetBattleAtProcyon'' which prominently features the Procyon Empire -- but, oddly, there's no actual battle at Procyon.

This page is devoted to those stars within 50 light-years of UsefulNotes/TheSolarSystem. Many of these stars are red dwarfs[[note]]Yes, dwarfs, not dwarves. The only available plural for "dwarf" was "dwarfs" until Creator/JRRTolkien came along in the middle of the 20th century. See, for example, ''Disney/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs''.[[/note]]; only the red dwarfs closest to Sol (less than 12 ly) are listed here. Except Gliese 581 and TRAPPIST-1, which are important.

!!''YZ Ceti (12.6 ly)''
Yet another red dwarf that does not flare (just kidding, it does). It's of special interest as it's at just 1.6 light-years of Tau Ceti, close enough to perturb a hypothetical Oort cloud of the latter sending comets to the innermost regions of its planetary system and vice-versa, and because it has two planets with data suggesting the presence of one, maybe two, more. However while those planets are very similar in mass to Earth, they are too close to YZ Ceti to have liquid water on their surfaces and the flare activity of the star is likely to have stripped away their atmospheres.

Unfortunately, the hype from February 2017 seems to have died down as the reality and science started to set in. Like with all red dwarf stars, TRAPPIST-1 is a flare star, and with it, brings many of the usual complications: tidally-locked planets being bombarded with flare radiation, likely stripping them of their atmospheres and water and thus, making the chances of life unlikely. And in addition to that, despite them being water-rich at the very least, the two innermost planets are thought to have hellish conditions next to which Venus is a vacation spot. However, it is still a likely place for possible colonization in the future.

A binary pair of red dwarfs, both of which are flare stars. (They carry the Variable Star designations "GX Andromedae" and "GQ Andromedae".) Their orbit is very wide -- at closest approach, they're over 100 A.U. apart, and it takes nearly three millennia for them to go 'round each other once.

Four "super-earth" sized planets have been confirmed to orbit this star. Two of them are too close for liquid water to exist on their surfaces, and one of them is too far away. The planet in between, Tau Ceti e, is a 4-earth-mass world that ''might'' be at the right distance for liquid water to exist; but more likley it's a tad too close and would be more like Venus. Note, though, that most of our current evidence suggests that the Tau Ceti planets are low-density. That is, there are no rocky surfaces: they are at best waterworlds (in the biozone), or worse, mini-neptunes (out of the biozone).

Triple system with a main orange ([=K1V=]), a white dwarf (DA) and red dwarf ([=M5V=]). A planet was discovered in 2018 orbiting its main star, appropiately nicknamed "[[Franchise/StarTrek Vulcan]]". However unlike its fictional counterpart it's (yet another) Super Earth that receives even more stellar flux than Mercury in the Solr System, thus even if it was a rocky planet would be unhabitable for life as we know it.

!!''Epsilon Eridani (10.5 ly)''

While there are probably planets in the habitable zone here, finding life "[[Franchise/StarTrek as we know it]]" is improbable, as the entire system is far too young.[[note]]Our sun is is 4.57 billion years old. Earth came around about 30 million years later, and the simplest forms of life 740 million after that (or so sayeth [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_cycle the]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth other]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution wiki]]).[[/note]] Epsilon Eridani ''itself'' is at most 1 billion years old, probably younger, and its planets would be younger still. Life there is at best in the "single-celled organism" phase--if not the "parents grunting and groaning [[RightThroughTheWall in the next apartment over]]" bit. Note that in planetary formation science, grunting and groaning involves loads and loads of [[EarthShatteringKaboom planetesimals colliding]]. Generally, the planetary system of Epsilon Eridani is yet another primordial jumble of dozens of small planetoids, rocks and dust. One gas giant is suspected, and it even has a proper name: Aegir.

* ''Literature/{{Dogsbody}}'' stars (no pun intended) Sirius.

* The home of the Vulcans in ''Franchise/StarTrek''.

* Sirius tends to appear near Sol in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''. Habitable planets orbit Sirius A with surprising regularity, despite the unlikeliness of such an occurrence in RealLife.

* Procyon tends to appear near Sol in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''. Habitable planets orbit Procyon A occasionally, although less often than they do Alpha Centauri or Sirius.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', the Trappist system is usually found in the vicinity of the Sol or Deneb systems if you're playing the pre-made human empires. It can contain up to four small to medium-sized habitable worlds of various biomes - an exceptionally large number that's unlikely to be found anywhere else in the galaxy.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', the Trappist system is usually found in the vicinity of the Sol or Deneb systems if you're playing the pre-made human empires. It can contain up to four small to medium-sized habitable worlds of various biomes - an exceptionally large number that's unlikely to be found elsewhere in the entire galaxy.