Joel Ratner, age 9, of Cleveland, Ohio, for his question:

Which star is closest to the sun?

If you want to see the sun's nearest star neighbor, you will have to travel south of the equator. As you know, there is one set of stars above the Northern hemisphere and a different set above the Southern Hemisphere. South of the equator you can see Alpha Centauri, which looks 1ike a bright star. Somebody is sure to tell you that it is the closest star to the sun. However, there is more to the story.

The distance between the sun and Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years. This means that its light takes almost four and a half years to reach us, traveling all the way at 186,800 miles per second. However, Alpha Centaurs, which looks like a single star, is actually three stars in one. One of the triplets is a little red star named Proxima  ¬and Proxima is a little closer than the other two. The triplets are moving closer to us  ¬at 14 miles per second.