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'Wolf 359' is a star located approximately 2.4 parsecs or 7.8 light years from Earth. It is one of the nearest stars; only the Alpha Centauri system and Barnard's star are known to be closer. Its celestial position is in the constellation Leo, near the ecliptic. It is an extremely faint red dwarf, too dim to be visible to the naked eye, and it is a flare star.

Contents

Properties

See also

References

External links

Properties

The star was discovered using astrophotography by German astronomer Max Wolf in 1918. Its closest neighbor is Ross 128, 1.16 pc or 3.79 ly away. In 2001 this became the first star other than the Sun to have the spectrum of its corona observed from a ground-based telescope.^[1]
It is classified as a UV Ceti-type flare star,^[2] and has a relatively high flare rate. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) detected 32 flare events within a two hour period, with energies of 10²⁷ ergs and higher.^[3] A search of this star by the HST revealed no stellar companions. However this does not preclude the presence of smaller companions that are below the telescope's detection limit, such as a planet in a close orbit.^[4]

See also

★ List of nearest stars

★ Wolf 359 in fiction

References

1. Ground-based observation of emission lines from the corona of a red-dwarf star, Schmitt, J. H. M. M. ; Wichmann, R., , , Nature, 2001
2. Characteristics of activity energetics of he UV Cet-type flare stars, Gershberg, R. E.; Shakhovskaia, N. I., , , Astrophysics and Space Science, 1983
3. A Search for Microflaring Activity on dMe Flare Stars. I. Observations of the dM8e Star CN Leonis, Robinson, R. D.; Carpenter, K. G.; Percival, J. W.; Bookbinder, J. A., , , Astrophysical Journal, 1995
4. A Search for Faint Companions to Nearby Stars Using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, Daniel J. Schroeder ''et al'', , , The Astronomical Journal, 2000

External links

★ SolStation.com: Wolf 359

★ The Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight