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To test range, life, and general performance of audio communications transmitter, type X21. To test the above-mentioned transmitter under conditions of deep space flight. This test to take place on the planet Tara, Alpha Centauri. This communication and all subsequent information relative to above-mentioned mission shall be classified as topmost secret. Signed: WALTERS, Commandant, Space Academy
As this particular star is the brightest in the constellation Centaurus, it is called Alpha Centauri; and if ever you travel into the Southern Hemisphere and see it, you may greet it as our nearest neighbour in the starry universe, so far as we know at present.
Both used stars whose proper motion had been found to be large, as this argued proximity. Henderson, at the Cape of Good Hope, observed alpha Centauri, whose annual proper motion he found to amount to 3".6, in 1832-3; and a few years later deduced its parallax 1".16. His successor at the Cape, Maclear, reduced this to 0".92.
These successes led to renewed zeal, and now the distances of many stars are known more or less accurately. Several of the brightest stars, which might be expected to be the nearest, have not shown a parallax amounting to a twentieth of a second of arc. Among these are Canopus, alpha Orionis, alpha Cygni, beta Centauri, and gamma Cassiopeia. Oudemans has published a list of parallaxes observed.
But in that case there must have been an original condensation of stars at that point in space. This could probably have been produced by the coagulation of a great nebula into stellar nuclei, a process which seems now to be taking place in the Orion Nebula. A yet more remarkable globular star-cluster exists in the southern hemisphere, Omega Centauri.
There was no better place to drop out of sight than on Ganymede, for it was here that the deep spacers, gigantic spaceships that hauled supplies to the colonies of Alpha Centauri, Tara, and Roald made their last stop. If Roger had finally made good his threat to leave the Academy, Ganymede was the logical place to do it. But why? "Yeow!" Astro's bull-like roar echoed through the Good Company.
Höffler assigned to it in 1897 although on grounds more or less hypothetical a mean parallax corresponding to a light-journey of 192 years, which would give to the marching squadron a total extent of at least fourteen times the distance from the sun to Alpha Centauri, while implying for its brightest member Eta Ursæ Majoris the lustre of six hundred suns.
It was by taking the mean of a great number of valuations, that I saw the relative intensity of the light of the great stars decrease in the following manner: Sirius, Canopus, a Centauri, Acherner, b Centauri, Fomalhaut, Rigel, Procyon, Betelgueuse, e of the Great Dog, d of the Great Dog, a of the Crane, a of the Peacock.
Members of the crew of the recent expedition to Tara, a planet in orbit around the sun star Alpha Centauri, they had taken a rocket scout and blasted off without permission from Major Connel, the commander of the mission, who, in this case, was authorized traffic-control officer. Connel had recommended immediate suspension of their space papers.
The nearest star of all, Alpha Centauri, visible only in latitudes south of our middle ones, is perhaps half as far as Bessel's star, while Sirius and one or two others are nearly at the same distance. About 100 stars, all told, have had their parallax measured with a greater or less degree of probability.
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