Nearest Stars to the Sun
Key Findings
About This Dataset
Nearest Stars to the SunProxima Centauri, at 4.25 light-years, is the closest star to the Sun, narrowly ahead of the main Alpha Centauri pair (4.34 light-years) to which it is loosely bound. Even this nearest neighbour is so remote that light, travelling at 300,000 km per second, takes more than four years to reach us. Barnard's Star (5.96) is the next closest, and most of the remaining neighbours, Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, Ross 154 and Ross 248, are faint red dwarfs invisible to the naked eye. Sirius (8.71), the brightest star in our sky, is a notable exception, being both relatively close and intrinsically luminous. The tight span from 4.25 to 10.47 light-years underlines how sparse stars really are, with vast stretches of empty space separating even the closest suns.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- List of nearest stars
- Coverage
- 10 entities · 10 observations
- Measure
- Distance from the Sun (light-years)
- Last updated
- 7 July 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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