Proxima Centauri
The closest star to the Sun, a red dwarf 4.25 light years out with a planet in its habitable zone.
Where it is right now
Proxima Centauri is in Centaurus, 268552.8 AU away.
Computed for 2 August 2026, 17:00 UTC, and recomputed at least hourly. This page is cached, so treat the line above as accurate to the hour rather than to the second. The map shows the live position.
Position from a Kepler propagation of the published elements below, accurate to about an arcminute.
Facts
Every line carries the source it came from.
- Distance
- 4.2465 light years, about 268,600 AUSource: SIMBAD / Hipparcos, J2000 astrometry
- Type
- M5.5Ve red dwarf, 12 percent of the Sun's massSource: SIMBAD / Hipparcos, J2000 astrometry
- Radius
- about 107,000 km, 15 percent of the Sun'sSource: SIMBAD / Hipparcos, J2000 astrometry
- Apparent magnitude
- 11.13, far too faint for the naked eye despite being nearestSource: SIMBAD / Hipparcos, J2000 astrometry
- Planets
- at least three, including Proxima b in the habitable zoneSource: ESO / NASA Exoplanet Archive
- Orbit
- bound to Alpha Centauri A and B on a roughly 550,000 year orbitSource: ESO / NASA Exoplanet Archive
Physical size
- Mean radius
- 107,280 km
- Diameter
- 214,560 km across
Orbit
Elements are heliocentric, referred to the J2000.0 ecliptic.
- Average distance from the Sun
- 268,553.0 AU
- Eccentricity
- 0.0000, almost perfectly circular
- Inclination to the ecliptic
- -44.76 degrees
- Orbital period
- 999.3 million years
- Longitude of ascending node
- 149.11 degrees
- Argument of periapsis
- 90.00 degrees
- Mean anomaly at J2000.0
- 0.00 degrees
Claim this body
$499 per year
Proxima Centauri and the Alpha Centauri pair. Opens when the map expands past the solar system. Leased annually.
Wave 4 is not open yet, so this body is not for sale today. Wave 1 is.
A claim is a listing on this map. Not an IAU designation. Permanent, with one disclosed exception for dead links: see the terms.
Catalog id proxima-centauri. 3,172 objects on the map, of which 171 are hand-authored with sourced facts.