Neighbours of the Solar system
Some time ago, I tried to find a star map of the closest stellar systems to us. The Sun is our star, and many people know that Alpha Centauri is the closest star to us after our own Sun, but what else is there? I couldn’t find a version I liked, so I decided to draw one myself.
It took a few years to finish this project, but in the end it turned out really nice. I drew everything by hand, so it’s not scientifically accurate, but it does give the overall picture about our neighbourhood. The striking number of red dwarves gives perspective to the stars we don’t see – the M-class stars are too faint to be visible with our naked eye, and they make ca. 75% of all the stars in the universe. And all the brown dwarves around us we haven’t even found yet.
The map shows the nearest stars in 30 light-year radius. The bigger the star is, the closer it is. For now, the map is in Finnish only. I’ll try to find some time to translate it in the near future.
This design is Creative Commons, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. You are free to download, print and share it as it is, as long as you won’t do changes and try not to profit from it. (My name is already in the design for the credit.) The file is a printable format, the size is normal poster size in Europe, 70cm x 50cm. There is 3mm bleed on all sides for printing. Format: CMYK Coated FOGRA39. I encourage you to make a print for yourself or your local school!
You can download the Finnish version of the star map from here