How close did Jupiter come to being a "no foolin'" star, thus giving us a binary solar system?
930317
Not even close.  If Jupiter were about 13 times bigger, it MAY (stress - MAY) have experienced deuterium fusion for a few thousand years, then died.  Significantly larger - 65 times or so, would fuse deuterium and lithium, but again, only for a very short time.  However, Brown dwarfs have convective surfaces and interiors, meaning the layers are constantly churning and mixing due to heat.  Under about 13 times Jupiter's size, the body is separated into layers and considered a planet.\n\nThe tiniest stars capable of full fusion are, at a minimum, about 100 times larger than Jupiter.  \n\nHowever, and this is the weird part, we're talking about mass, and the main differentiator is how that mass reacts and what forces are in play.  Which means Jupiter, the Brown Dwarfs, and the tiniest smallest stars are all about the same physical size, just massively different densities.
261012
the nearest star is the sun having nine planets in orbit.the sun is 93,027,003 miles away from earth.if you dont beleive me,go ask you teacher or someone.
1184119
Jupiter is further from the sun, and has a larger orbital path.  That is why it takes longer (it has to travel further to go around)
692194
Here are those nearer than 10 light years away:\n\nNote that several of these are double or triple stars in a star system\n\nName, Distance, Apparent Magnitude, Absolute Magnitude\nProxima Centauri V645 Cen 4.2 11.05 (var.) 15.5  \nRigil Kentaurus Alpha Cen A 4.3 -0.01 4.4 \n Alpha Cen B 4.3 1.33 5.7\nBarnard's Star  6.0 9.54 13.2 \nWolf 359 CN Leo 7.7 13.53 (var.) 16.7  \n BD +36 2147 8.2 7.50 10.5  \nLuyten 726-8A UV Cet A 8.4 12.52 (var.) 15.5  \nLuyten 726-8B UV Cet B 8.4 13.02 (var.) 16.0  \nSirius A Alpha CMa A 8.6 -1.46 1.4  \nSirius B Alpha CMa B 8.6 8.3 11.2
508585
There have been many systems identified, some with multiple planets and a few with asteroid belts. The problem is that they are mostly discovered by measuring the minute movements of the star caused by gravitational influences of nearby orbiting objects, so most of the discoveries to date have been systems with relatively large planets (many times larger than our Jupiter) and quite close to the star so that the movement is more easily detected. Recently however, there have been more sensitive sensor arrays which have been able to resolve more "normal" configurations using sophisticated imagery, so there is hope for discoveries of systems more similar to our own in the near future. In any event, given the tremendous distances involved, the resolution of optical telescopes available in the foreseeable future would pretty much preclude any traditional photograph of such a system if it were to be found. There have been some rather blurry computer images generated from these other imaging systems, but I'd hardly call them photographs. Try monitoring <space.com>
726348
Well, that is one hypothesis, which is "conjecture", which is just to say it's a "great big guess".  No astronomical explanation has thus far been a satisfactory explanation, because the hypotheses fail to explain "why" comets orbit the Sun clockwise, while everything in our Solar System rotates counter-clockwise along with the counter-clockwise rotation of the Sun.\n\nMy analysis has determined that our Solar System and the Sirius Binary System are interlocked in an electromagnetic deadly dance of death in which the two systems cyclically and recurrently interpenetrate through each other every 12,000-year period.  Hence, our Solar System is on a collision course with the Sirian System.  This transversion is an extinction level event that I have identified as the Sirian-Solar Reconvergence.  The Sirian Binary rotates clockwise, thus comets are dislodged debris from the Sirian System captured within our Solar System from each Reconvergent event in which the comets retain their original clockwise rotation due to their immense velocity that cannot be overcome by the rotational influence of our counter-clockwise system. \n\nThe Sirian-Solar Reconvergence also explains all the crater impacting that has scared all the solid-body planets.  As the cosmocataclysm ensues all the debris from the various debris belts in both systems dislodge and rains down mass celestial bombardment on every object in both systems, particularly when the Reconvergence reaches its critical vertex of transversion.\n\nAdditionally, the Sirian Solar Reconvergence would completely explain why the planet Venus spins clockwise and backwards (opposite to the spin of the other planets) while revolving around the Sun counter-clockwise, thus creating the unusual phenomenon of one day being one year, because it completes one revolution in one year.  Clearly this is an indication that Venus was originally a planet torn out of its clockwise orbit in the clockwise Sirian System during one of the Reconvergence, and was captured by our Sun.\n\nThe reason why the two systems are locked in this process is because they were formerly unified as one solar system; our system was originally the Osirian Trinary Stellar System.  Sirius B is our original paternal star, Sirius A was the outer star that orbited the body of the system, our Sun (Sol) was technically Sirius C, originally a binary companion with Sirius B at the core of our former Trinary System, and there were originally a total of eleven planets.  The split occurred because Sirius B after depleting its helium as a Red Giant exploded into a Nebula Discontinuity Event, creating the Local Compression Bubble and precipitating the celestial dynamics that tore the system in half.  The two halves journey off to their greatest distance, and then invert and return to the path around the galactic center that they were originally blown apart from, being the recyclic event of the Sirian-Solar Reconvergence.  This cosmocataclysm wipes all human civilization off the face of the Earth and catapults Mankind back to a State of Neobarbarism to begin the slow and incremental process of re-civilization all over again.  It is also responsible for suddenly laying down the Geological Column and entombing the charred bones of beasts and men into fossilization within the stratification, because the event is so violent, catapulting the Earth out of its orbit and thrusting the oceanic waters out of their basins, overrunning the continents.\n\nAs our Solar System and the Sirian System near ever closer, signs of the next Sirian-Solar Reconvergence are mounting, being the environmental deterioration of the terrestrial environment, increased volcanism on the oceanic floors that is heating up the seas and affecting the climatic temperatures, the melting of Earth’s and Mars’s polar ice caps, new red spot storms on Jupiter, the addition of a third belt to the Van Allen Radiation Belts that surround the Earth, the vio
409930
Multiple star systems are very common. In fact, the closest star to us (Proxima Centauri) is part of just such a system. It was once believed that planets couldn't be in multiple star systems, but of the 166 extrasolar planets so far found, several are in such systems.\n\nAs for our solar system that seems to have just one star, a persistent theory continues that the sun does have a companion star that has an orbit so highly eccentric that it approaches the sun once in several million years. To date, no hard evidence for such a star exists. Also, if Jupiter had more mass, it would have at least started its life as a brown dwarf star.
1009893
It is possible that the class of giant gas planets might merge into brown dwarfs at the upper end of the scale. However, a brown dwarf, while it does not have enough internal pressure to fuse hydrogen into helium, can fuse deuterium.  There's not much deuterium, so they don't burn very brightly or for very long, but this brief burst of fusion power makes them stars of a sort. \n\nBrown dwarfs range in size from about .013 solar mass (~13x the mass of Jupiter) to .08 solar mass.  Smaller bodies might be planets, slightly larger bodies are red dwarf stars.
815533
Mercury, Venus and Mars are always closer than 574,380,430.5648 miles.  That number is close to the distance of Jupiter at it's farthest.
683582
There are about a couple hundred billion stars in our galaxy. The stars close to the center are not likely to have planets because of dynamical considerations (other stars pass by too frequently to have stable orbits).\n\nThe BIG question is how many planets there are per star on average. Our sun has ten planets and assorted other objects. We have found many other planets orbiting other stars, but most of those stars have only one planet (that we have detected). One has three planets that we know about. HOWEVER, the way we detect these planets favors detecting large planets that are very close to their star. Once you start to ask about planets as small as Saturn, or that are farther away than Mercury is from our sun, the methods don't work so well.\n\nThe upshot is that we really just don't know how many planets a typical star has. Some probably have none. How many have none? We don't know. How many have ten smallish planets? We don't know. At best we can guess, say 4-5 on average. This would give close to a trillion planets in our galaxy. The number could easily be a tenth of this, though.
763580
Redefining a planet as another type of solar system celestial body has occurred before. Don't think the scientists are nit-picking on Pluto. In the 1800's astronomers discovered a  celestial body(Ceres) between Mars & Jupiter, & initially named it as a planet. But other celestial bodies were discovered between Mars & Jupiter, & astronomers knew that the solar system had become more complex than they previously thought. Therefore, they renamed these previously named planets as asteroids. No one today thinks the asteroids between Mars & Jupiter should be planets. Since thousands of celestial bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune have been discovered(several really big ones), it seems logical to redefine Pluto as one of the trans-Neptunian objects or Kuiper belt objects to reflect our more complex understanding of our solar system. It happened in the 1800's to the Mars-Jupiter asteroids...it just happened in the 21st century for the Kuiper Belt objects. The reason that Pluto's planetary status was not reassigned before now was to honor Pluto's discoverer, Dr. Clyde Tombaugh. Pluto's discovery was truly amazing in the1930's. But Dr. Tombaugh's widow Patricia, age 93, reluctantly admitted that even Dr. Tombaugh would understand Pluto's reassignment.
454222
Check this out:\n\n"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope precisely measured the mass of the oldest known planet in our Milky Way galaxy. At an estimated age of 13 billion years, the planet is more than twice as old as Earth’s 4.5 billion years. It’s about as old as a planet can be. It formed around a young, sun-like star barely 1 billion years after our universe’s birth in the Big Bang. The ancient planet has had a remarkable history because it resides in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a cluster of more than 100,000 stars. The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate about the identity of this ancient world. Until Hubble’s measurement, astronomers had debated the identity of this object. Was it a planet or a brown dwarf? Hubble’s analysis shows that the object is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, confirming that it is a planet. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence that the first planets formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude that planets may be very abundant in our galaxy."
871143
Largest known to date is the "puffy planet" HAT-P-1b orbiting the sunlike star ADS 16402 B, one of a binary pair of G0 V stars 450 light yeard away, in the constellation Lacerta. Our sun is of spectral class G2 V i.e. a little cooler than ADS 16402 B.\n\nHAT-P-1b has a radius of 1.36 x the radius of Jupiter. \n\nIt was discovered on 13 September 2006 and is 450 light years away. It has the lowest density of any known extrasolar planet. It also has the name Krais.\n\nIt was announced as follows:\n\n"Using small automated telescopes in Arizona and Hawaii, the HATNet project has detected an object transiting one member of the double star system ADS 16402 AB. This system is a pair of G0 main-sequence stars with age about 3 billion years, at a distance of ~139 parsecs and projected separation of ~1550 AU. The transit signal has a period of 4.46529 days."\n\nNote: Only the radii of transiting planets are known.
893643
Currently there are 182 known "exoplanets".  The large majority are Jupiter-sized or larger, and much closer to their Sun than the gas giants in our solar system are to our Sun.  Thus, the term "hot Jupiter" is used to describe these, big close exoplanets.\n\nWhile a variety of techniques exist to find exoplanets, the most common is looking for wobbles induced in the parent star by the planet's minor gravitational pull.  This technique means that we're biased towards finding planets which induce large wobbles in their parent star.  Large wobbles are produced by larger planets that are very close to their star...so the huge population of hot Jupiters we find is probably not representative of the true exoplanet distribution.
410746
(m)\n\nIn July 1995, two astronomers from the University of Geneva, Didier Queloz and Michael Mayor, found the first planet orbiting a normal star in the constellation of Pegasus by the spectroscopy method. The discovery of 51 Pegasus was confirmed by astronomers Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler of San Francisco State University. Marcy and Butler have since found numerous planets around other stars using the spectroscopy method. As of May 2000, we have found over 50 extrasolar planets. All of the planet-hunting methods tend to detect large planets -- about half the size of Jupiter to several times the size of Jupiter. These planets tend to orbit their parent stars within about 3 astronomical units (AU)\n\nSome of the extrasolar planets found.\nThe names of the planets are in the center of each row. The position of each planet in the row indicates its distance from its parent star in AU. The mass of the each planet is written to its right (MJ means "compared to the mass of Jupiter").
1148346
I suppose your question is: "The heaviest natural satellite of our stellar system?"\n\nThe answer:\nAstronomers declare that Ganymede, Jupiter's main galilean satellite, is the largest & the heaviest natural satellite in the Solar System, with a diameter of 5,268 km (3,273 miles). \nGanymede is larger than the planet Mercury.\n\n:-)
309432
the polaris star system is about 430 lightyears from earth.\n\nhttp://skyandtelescope.com/printable/news/article_1658.asp