Tau Ceti

A hypothetical planet of Tau Ceti. Painting by David Harding

The most Sun-like of the 30 nearest stars to the Sun. It lies in the constellation Cetus and is easily visible without a telescope.

Tau Ceti has been the target of many SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) programs including the first, Project Ozma, which also looked for signals from Epsilon Eridani. It is also the first star to be found to have a disk of dust and comets around it similar in size and shape to the disk of comets and asteroids that orbits the Sun. However, the similarity ends there because it appears that Tau Ceti has more than ten times the number of comets and asteroids that there are in our Solar System.

It is not known if the star is accompanied by any planets – its low metallicity makes it questionable whether the nebula from which it condensed had sufficient heavy element content to allow planet-sized objects to form. However, if any planets are present, as hypothesized in the accompanying painting, they are likely to be subjected to a much more intense bombardment than anything the Earth has experienced, making the long-term survival of any life problematic.

visual magnitude	3.49
absolute magnitude	5.68
spectral type	G8Vp
luminosity	0.59 L_sun
mass	0.81 M_sun
distance	11.89 ± 0.03 light-years (3.64 ± 0.01 pc)
position	R.A. 01h 44m 04.1s, Dec. -15° 56' 14"
other designations	52 Ceti, HD 10700, HR 509, BD-16°295, GJ 71, SAO 147986, HIP 8102

Related entries

• nearest stars
• Sun-like stars

Related category

• NOTABLE STARS

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