Encyclopedia > Research Consortium on Nearby Stars
The Research Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS) is a project to investigate the stars nearest to the Solar System - those within 10 parsecs (32.6 light years).
The project has discovered several nearby white dwarf and red dwarfs, including GJ 1061 in 1997 which is the 20th nearest of known star systems at a distance of 11.9 light years.
The purpose of RECONS is to understand the nature of the Sun's nearest stellar neighbors, both individually and as a population.
Our goals are to discover ``missing'' members of the sample of stars within 10 parsecs (32.6 light years), and to characterize all stars within that distance limit.
Characterization includes photometry and spectroscopy at both optical and infrared wavelengths, as well as determinations of the luminosity function, mass function, and multiplicity fraction of the nearbystars.
The greater the parallax of a star the closer it is to the Earth and Sol, and the smaller its distance in parsecs.
Hence, the closest star to the Earth will have the largest measured parallax; this belongs to the star Proxima Centauri, which has a parallax of 0.772 arcseconds and thus is located approximately 1.30 parsecs, or 4.22 light-years, away from Sol.
While there are no bright blue stars of spectral "O" or "B" in the Solar neighborhood, most of the 74 nearby AFGK bright stars have probably been found, although a few dim, late orange-red K-type dwarfs may yet be identified.
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