I have a rather odd query as stated in the title that perhaps an Astronomer might know or be able to work out. I'm wondering what the 7th closest Solar system is to our "Sol" solar system. What this means is if solar systems were one light year out each, which solar system would reside at 7 light years out. Admittedly it's not an easy query to answer considering the multiple directions that solar systems exist in. Any answers would be appreciated, I can't explain what it's in aid of because of current discussions elsewhere, but if it leads to anything I'll express it here.
The 7th closest star with known planets is GJ317, with one known planet. It is at a distance of 9.17 parsecs. One note, There is only one Solar system, ours. This is because it is named after our star, Sol.
That's 29 and a fraction light-years for laymen. I doubt very strongly that that convention is going to hold up in laymen's language. We're the people who celebrated the start of the 21st century in 2000, remember? Besides, sol is just the Latin word for "sun." (Also Spanish and Catalan.) The Germans form compound words for "solar" by just using the word Sonnen-, which is an inflected form of the word "sun." I betcha "solar system" is soon going to mean a planetary system orbiting any star.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's ross 248 at a mere 9,86LY However if you would really count each star individually and count alpha centauri as 3 (as the numbre of stars it has). Then it would be sirius A a massive star with 2,1 X sol's mass, at 8,6LY. link
Is this factualy accurate that this is the only solar systeml? What are the other star system refered to as officialy.
Since the OP said "solar system" rather than "star", I assumed he meant stars with planets. Since we can't assume that all stars have planets, I defaulted to stars around which planets have been detected.
Btw, thank you all for your responses. I'll have to look into the systems mentioned, for clarification I actually meant Star systems with or without known planets and not counting multiple stars within the system (namely the system would count as one). The main reason I didn't want to explain why I was interested is because of it being part of a rather loopy hypothesis and it was best to just keep the question relevant to just facts rather than speculative theory. Thanks again for your time in answering.
Then it would be Ross 154 (not Ross 248) at 9.6 ly I was thrown off by your claim that it would be a little hard to figure out. I mean all you had to do was google "nearest stars" and the info is right there.
Thank you for pointing out I should of googled, I used the wrong keywords previously by being too specific (7th star system from Sol) rather than just asking for a "List of the nearest stars" which would of returned a wiki entry.
It should be pointed out here that this is with our current technology and that better space telescopes may reveal nearby stars which have smaller planets which had been previously missed.
