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April 5

What is the star nearest to TRAPPIST-1?

I have this question for a while now. So, what is the closest star to TRAPPIST-1, or in another terms, what is the star that has the shortest distance to TRAPPIST-1? I tried to search online for an answer to no avail. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:49, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, it's not TRAPPIST-1. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:50, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Judging by the chart in the infobox, something like Phi Aquarii (φ Aquarii) (see List of stars in Aquarius) may be close, but I'm no Martin Rees. MinorProphet (talk) 22:57, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to WolframAlpha, Trappist-1 and Phi Aquarii are 182.6 light years (56 parsecs) apart, and TRAPPIST-1 is 40.66 light years from Sol according to our article, so Phi Aquarii is not the answer.-Gadfium (talk) 00:02, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how to find the answer directly, but Gliese 898 is 11.6 ly from TRAPPIST-1 [1], while HR 8866 and HR 8544 are about 29.3 light years from it. Gl 849 and Gliese 884 are 13.66 and 16.26 ly away. Everything else I've tried is further away, but that's no guarantee there isn't a closer star.-Gadfium (talk) 00:15, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Using the data from TRAPPIST-1 and List of stars in Aquarius I get the same closest three, but different distances:

10.26 ly: Gliese 898
14.44 ly: Gliese 849
16.82 ly: Gliese 884
25.68 ly: Gliese 876
27.47 ly: 53 Aquarii

--Lambiam 11:13, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As TRAPPIST-1 is only about 40 ly away, any star less than 10 ly from it can be up to 15 degrees away as seen from Earth, so such a star may not be in Aquarius. We should check Pisces and Pegasus too. And calculate proper error bars; I'm pretty sure that using those the results given by Gadfium and Lambiam will overlap. I won't do that today. The proper way to do it is to download all objects in the Gaia catalogue between right ascension 21h45m and 0h25m or thereabouts, declination between -22⁰ and +12⁰, parallax between 58 mas and 128 mas (there shouldn't be that many stars in that search volume) and write a little computer program to calculate the distances, incuding proper error bars. PiusImpavidus (talk) 18:58, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Should we look forward to your forthcoming novel about interstellar trade routes in the Aquarian Sector :-)? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 151.227.130.213 (talk) 20:52, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

lol, I'm just curious. I'm finding data about the TRAPPIST-1 system and wanting to make a {{Infobox planetary system}} for it, similar to the Solar System. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:24, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]