Tau Ceti facts for kids

Tau Ceti (also called τ Cet or τ Ceti) is a star in the constellation called Cetus. You can see it without a telescope because it is a third-magnitude star. This means it is quite bright in the night sky.

Tau Ceti is very similar to our Sun. It is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, just like the Sun. However, it is a bit smaller, with about 78% of the Sun's mass. It is also quite close to our Solar System, only about 12 light-years away. This makes it one of our closest stellar neighbors. Tau Ceti is the closest single star that is a G-class star, which is the same type as our Sun.

Scientists are very interested in Tau Ceti because it is so much like the Sun. It has a lot of dust around it, more than ten times the amount in our Solar System. This dust forms a debris disk. Scientists believe there are probably five planets orbiting Tau Ceti. Two of these planets might be in the habitable zone. The habitable zone is the area around a star where it's not too hot and not too cold, so liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.

Because of its Sun-like features, Tau Ceti is a popular target for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This project looks for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. Tau Ceti also appears in many science fiction stories.

Searching for Life Around Tau Ceti

Scientists have been looking for signs of life around Tau Ceti for a long time.

Early Searches for Radio Signals

Project Ozma was one of the first projects to search for intelligent life. It was part of the SETI program. The astronomer Frank Drake led this project. He chose Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani as the first stars to study. Both stars are close to our Solar System and are similar to the Sun.

Scientists listened for artificial radio signals from these stars for 200 hours. They did not find any signals that seemed to come from intelligent life. Other radio searches of Tau Ceti since then have also not found any signals.

Are There Planets Around Tau Ceti?

On December 19, 2012, scientists announced exciting news. They found evidence that five planets might be orbiting Tau Ceti! These planets are thought to be between two and six times the mass of Earth. They take between 14 and 640 days to orbit their star.

One of these planets, called Tau Ceti e, orbits about half as far from Tau Ceti as Earth does from the Sun. Tau Ceti is not as bright as our Sun, only about 52% as luminous. Even so, Tau Ceti e would get about 1.71 times as much light and heat as Earth does. This is a bit less than Venus gets from our Sun. Some research suggests that Tau Ceti e could be within the star's habitable zone.

The habitable zone is the region around a star where an Earth-like planet could have liquid water. For Tau Ceti, this zone is between 0.55 and 1.16 AU from the star. One AU is the average distance from Earth to the Sun.

Tau Ceti in Fiction

Tau Ceti has inspired many science fiction writers and filmmakers.

• In The Expanse TV series, Tau Ceti is the destination of a huge spaceship called the Nauvoo. This ship is on a 100-year journey to reach the star.
• In Isaac Asimov's Foundation book series, Tau Ceti is the home star of the planet Aurora. Aurora was the first planet colonized by humans outside of Earth's Solar System.

Images for kids

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  Artist's impression of Tau Ceti with six rocky planets in orbit around it.

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  The Sun (left) is both larger and somewhat hotter than the less active Tau Ceti (right).

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  Tau Ceti could have been a search target for the canceled Terrestrial Planet Finder

See also

In Spanish: Tau Ceti para niños