I am sure there is story potential in this

[james_davis_nicoll]

[Tau Ceti] has a mean galacto-centric distance of 9.7 kiloparsec (32,000 ly) and an orbital eccentricity of 0.22.

Which means the ratio between Tau Ceti's minimum distance to the core and its maximum distance is, I think, about .64.

Comments

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

I always knew those Tau Cetians were rather eccentric.

[(Anonymous)]

So... it should be leaving our neighborhood rather quickly.

Also, it would spend most of its time some thousands of LY out towards the galactic fringe, where stars are sparser and more metal-poor. But every couple of hundred million years, it would dive well in closer.


Doug M.

[peter-erwin.livejournal.com]

Yes, though the difference in local stellar density wouldn't be huge: something like 35 or 40% of the local mean density, I think (depending what exponential scale length you assume for the Galactic disk).

Apocenter = 11.8 kpc, pericenter = 7.6 kpc (assuming that our current distance to the Galactic center is 8.5 kpc, which is the distance used by the paper Wikipedia references). So Tau Ceti won't get a lot closer to the center.