page_title: Alpha Centauri
hierarchical_section_title: Alpha Centauri
caption_attribution_description: English: Trajectory of Alpha Centauri B relative to A (fixed to the coordinate origin) as seen from the Earth (inclined ellipse) and face-on (horizontal ellipse). The orbit parameters are taken from Pourbaix et al. (2002). The graph has been created with gnuplot based on data generated by solving Kepler's equation. Note 1: The time stamps refer to the motion as seen from Earth, i.e. delayed with respect to the true motion by the travel of light by about 4.4 years. North is down, as usual in many astronomical charts. Note 2: For simplicity, the points refer to steps of 1/80 of an orbit rather than to exact 1-year steps (which would be 1/79.91 of an orbit). Note 3: The ascending node is the point where B (with respect to A) penetrates the celestial plane and becomes more distant to Earth than A.
context_page_description: Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the southern Centaurus constellation. It is the fourth brightest star in the night sky, with a magnitude of -0.01. It is visible in the Southern Hemisphere, and is too far south for most of the Northern Hemisphere to see.
  Alpha Centauri is a binary star system of two stars A & B. The distance between them is quite close. To the naked eye, the stars are too close for the eye to be able to see them as separate. Their orbit is about the distance of the giant planets from our Sun.
  There is a third star, Proxima Centauri. This is usually considered separately, but in fact it is also gravitationally connected to the other two. It is actually slightly closer to us, with a very much larger orbit around A and B.
context_section_description: Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the southern Centaurus constellation. It is the fourth brightest star in the night sky, with a magnitude of -0.01. It is visible in the Southern Hemisphere, and is too far south for most of the Northern Hemisphere to see.
  Alpha Centauri is a binary star system of two stars A & B. The distance between them is quite close. To the naked eye, the stars are too close for the eye to be able to see them as separate. Their orbit is about the distance of the giant planets from our Sun.
  There is a third star, Proxima Centauri (or Alpha Centauri C). This is usually considered separately, but in fact it is also gravitationally connected to the other two. It is actually slightly closer to us, with a very much larger orbit around A and B.
caption: The Apparent and True Orbits of Alpha Centauri. 
  The Apparent Orbit (thin ellipse) is the shape of the orbit as seen by the observer on Earth. The True Orbit is the shape of the orbit viewed perpendicular to the plane of the orbital motion. According to the radial velocity vs. time,[1] the orbit is divided here into 80 points, and each step refers to a timestep of almost a year.
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