What is the closest star to earth, and how far away is it?
449066
Besides the sun, Proxima Centari is closest.  About four light years away.  (only visible from the southern hemisphere though).  Actually Alpha Centauri is a three-star system.  Alpha Centauri -C is the closest of the three to earth.
1132066
From the sun (sol) about 8 minutes and 12 seconds... From other stars, MUCH longer, over four years from the closest one (Proxima Centauri).
861683
The Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical.  When it is closest to the Sun it is a distance of 91.4 million miles.  At it's furthest it is 94.5m miles.  The distance between the Earth and the Sun is also known as 1AU (astronomical unit).
331809
science_FREAK, you think the furthest star is just 82 million km away????!!!  That wouldn't even take us out of our own solar system!  In fact, our star, the Sun, is 150 million km away!\n\nIf you mean why do some stars "appear" brighter than others, then that is because stars are at different distances from the Earth, and they are different sizes.  IF you had 2 identical stars, but one was twice the distance from the Earth that the other, then the further away one would appear much dimmer in the sky.\n\nBut all stars shine with a slightly different brightness, I doubt that any two are identical.  So the appearance of some stars being brighter than others is down to size of stars and how far away from us that they are.
684858
Alpha Centauri is only 4.3 light years away. Sirius is 8.6, Both are binary stars, two stars in a star system.
32702
CLOSEST?? to the sun?\nThat would be Mercury....
81010
Jupiter is way too close to be using light years.\n\nOne "Astronomical Unit" is the earth-sun distance and is approximately eight light minutes. Jupiter orbits at about five A.U. from the sun.  So even when Earth and Jupiter are at their most distant I would still expect that distance to be less than one light hour.
387950
That would be OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, a planet we belive to be orbiting around the star OGLE-2005-BLG-390L.  There is debate on if this detection is really a planet, as the technique used to find it was a one-shot event (gravitational micro-lensing), and can not be repeated.\n\nIf it is a planet it would be the most distant one we have ever found with a distance of between 18,200 and 24,800 light years away from us, in the direction of the galactic center.
238633
try this:\nhttp://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0769141.html#A0769148\n\nMercury: 36 million miles (57.9 million km)\nVenus: 67.24 million miles (108.2 million km)\nEarth: 92.9 million miles (149.6 million km)\nMars: 141.71 million miles (227.9 million km)\nJupiter: 483.88 million miles (778.3 million km)\nSaturn: 887.14 million miles (1,427 million km)\nNeptune: 1,783.98 million miles (2,870 million km)\nUranus: 2,796.46 million miles (4,497 million km)\nPluto: 3,666 million miles (5,900 million km)\n\nKeep in mind that they just found a 10th planet that they're calling Sedna. It's about 10,000 million miles away from the sun. Click here for more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3511678.stm
711947
The nearest black hole known to us is near a visible star called V 4641, in the constellation Sagittarius just 1,600 light years away in the direction of the galactic center.  It is about 3 to 10 solar masses and is classified as a microquasar.
1156316
In outer space...       ... about 6 inches away from Uranus
547876
If there is life on other planets (outside of our solar system), the odds of ever finding out that there is life there is infinitely, ridiculously small. The next-closest star to our solar system, Alpha Centauri, is just a shade under 4.3 light years away. Even if someone or something from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri had the ability to travel the distance between our two solar systems and not die of starvation or, if they were able to achieve near-light speed, keep their molecular structures from becoming severely distorted, they would have to make an amazing pinpoint shot to hit Earth. Even if there is "intelligent" life out there, I think it's impossible for us to ever make any sort of meaningful contact with it. Anyone who has ever shot a rifle knows how just a fraction of a degree can determine a hit or miss on a distant target. The odds are that much more exponentially outlandish if we imagine interstellar travelers getting lucky enough to find our planet and solar system out of all the others out there, no matter how "close" we are.
382741
The sun is the closest star to Earth.
16179
It is approximately 2.2 million light years away.  A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers), so multiply this by 2.2 million and you have the distance in miles/kilometers.
309432
the polaris star system is about 430 lightyears from earth.\n\nhttp://skyandtelescope.com/printable/news/article_1658.asp
270315
Sirius is also one of the nearest stars to Earth At a distance of 2.6 pc or 8.57 light years\nfor more information go to http://www.crystalinks.com/sirius.html\nhttp://www.google.co.in/search?q=distance%2Bsirius&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
527724
All stars except the Sun appear to the human eye as shining points in the night sky that twinkle because of the effect of the Earth's atmosphere. Interferometer telescopes are required in order to produce images of these objects. The Sun is also a star, but it is close enough to Earth to appear as a disk instead, and to provide daylight.\n\nStars are not spread uniformly across the universe, but are typically grouped into galaxies. A typical galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars. The majority of stars are gravitationally bound to other stars, forming binary stars. Larger groups called star clusters also exist.\n\nAstronomers estimate that there are at least 70 sextillion (7×1022) stars in the known universe [1]. That is 70 000 000 000 000 000 000 000, or 230 billion times as many as the 300 billion in our own Milky Way.\n\nThe nearest star to the Earth, apart from the Sun, is Proxima Centauri, which is 39.9 trillion kilometers, or 4.2 light years away (light from Proxima Centauri takes 4.2 years to reach Earth). Travelling at the orbit speed of the Space Shuttle (5 miles per second -- almost 30,000 kilometers per hour), it would take about 150,000 years to get there. Distances like this are typical inside galactic discs, where the Sun and Earth are located. Stars can be much closer to each other in the centres of galaxies and globular clusters, or much further apart in galactic halos.\n\nCheck the wikipedia link below.