Key Information
Scholz’s Star
| Type | Star (binary) |
| Diameter | 52,272 miles (A), 55,726 miles (B) |
| Distance | 22.2 light years |
| Temperature | 4,040 °F (A), 1,484 °F (B) |
| Star Type(s) | M9.5 (A), T5.5 (B) |
| Date of Discovery | 2013 (Ralf-Dieter Scholz) |
Learning Point
- Discovered only ten years ago (2013), Scholz’s Star passed by our Solar System only sixty or seventy thousand years ago, and came within a light year of our Sun. This likely has had an impact on some of the objects in our Solar System. The star is a red dwarf with a smaller brown dwarf orbiting it.
Project
- Draw a picture of Scholz’s Star as it passed by our Sun and Solar System.
- Overview
- Brown Dwarf Companion
Location
| Located in | Monoceros, within the Milky Way |
Fun Facts
- When it passed by our Solar System, the star would have been 100 times too dim to be seen with the naked eye.
- It was hard to see how close it was to Earth as its sideways movement was so small because it was moving directly away from us.
- Stars pass this close to our Solar System about every 100,000 years or so.
- It was named after the man who discovered it, Ralf-Dieter Scholz.
Past Lessons
| 150 | October 17, 2023 | (North America) |