Closest star
- Who
- Unknown
- What
- 149,600,000 kilometre(s)
- Where
- United Kingdom
- When
- 06 November 2017
The pioneering work of Father Angelo Secchi (Italy, 181878) in spectroscopy led to his classification scheme for stars, and to his conclusion that our own Sun was a star and not a phenomenon unique to the Solar System. At just 149,600,000 km (92,900,000 miles) from Earth, the Sun is astronomically close. The next nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away, or 40,000,000,000,000 km (24,000,000,000,000 miles) away.