Solar System's Next Close Encounter Will Be With Gliese 710, Say Astronomers
http://www.forbes.com/...-next-close-encounter-will-be-with-gliese-710-say-astronomers/#4840c2224b99
New data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission has given astronomers unprecedented accuracy in predicting that Gliese 710, a K-spectral
type star a little more than half the size of our Sun, will cross into our solar system’s Oort Cloud of comets some 1.35 million years from now.
According to a paper recently published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, Gliese 710 will swipe through a swath of the Oort Cloud’s estimated
few trillion comets, which in turn circle our solar system at distances of up to a light year.
The co-authors, Filip Berski and Piotr Dybczński, write that their calculations indicate that Gliese 710, currently estimated to be some 64 light years
away in the constellation of Serpens, will have the strongest influence on the Oort Cloud objects in the next ten million years. They note that their
calculations also indicate that Gliese 710 will pass 13,365 astronomical units (or Earth-Sun distances) from the Sun.
At its minimum distance, the paper’s co-authors note that of objects formed outside the solar system, Gliese 710 will appear as the brightest and the
fastest object on the night sky. The resulting Gliese 710 flyby, they write, will generate a large flux of new long-period Oort Cloud comets , many
of which will be able to reach the inner part of the solar system.
