Rigel Kentaurus

Rigel Kentaurus, from the Arabic Al Rijl al Kentaurus, "The Centaur's Foot" is better known as Alpha Centauri. Why have you heard of this star? Because it is one of the closest stars in the universe to Earth, and it is VERY similar to the sun. Want to find ET? Here's a good place to look (especially if you want to go there sometime soon).

Alpha Centauri is actually believed to be a trinary star... meaning there are three stars in orbit around each other. I suppose that means three sunrises every day for any planet in the system.

Anyway, Alpha Centaur A is almost identical to our Sun, and has great promise for hosting life-sustaining planets. Plus, at 4.35 light years from Earth (only 41,000,000,000,000km) it's just a hop, skip and jump away.

How will we find out if the star next door has planets? Well, according to this web page the Hubble Space Telescope is already looking for them, and "recently, at an experts meeting in Toledo/Spain, the chief of the NASA research program Mike Kaplan stated that '...we will discover extraterrestrial life in the next 25 years'."

Possibly he was talking about the next great space telescope: the James Webb Space Telescope, or perhaps one of the telescopes to follow: Terrestrial Planet Finder, one of the formation flying missions; or one of the huge orbiting telescopes that will require Human/robotic in-space assembly... a topic I am very interested in as a result of my recent involvement in the Hubble Robotic Servicing and Deorbit Mission.