Become a fan of h2g2 We should remember that... of the 6,000
stars [that] the average human eye could see in the entire sky,
probably not more than thirty – or one-half of one percent – are
less luminous than the Sun; that probably, of the 700-odd stars
nearer than ten parsecs, at least 96% are less luminous than the
Sun. There is not even ONE real yellow giant – such as Capella,
Pollux, or Arcturus – nearer than ten parsecs1 and only about
four main sequence A stars. – Dutch astronomer Willem Jacob
Luyten (1899 - 1994) The closest star to us is, of course, our
own Sun. It's unusual because it's a solitary yellow dwarf,
while most of the stars nearby are in binary or even multiple
systems. What makes our star really special though, is that it
provides the energy for the only life in the Universe that we
know of. Less Than Ten Light Years The nearest star to the Sun
is Proxima Centauri (also known as alpha Centauri C), which is a
red dwarf, and is 4.2 light years2 distant. It has two stellar
companions, the ye