Tau Ceti

(taw, t'ow see -tÿ, set -ee) (τ Cet) An orange-red main-sequence dwarf star in the constellation Cetus and one of the Sun's near neighbors. It is located in the sky just northeast of Diphda (β Ceti). Tau Ceti is comparable in size and mass with the Sun but is only about three-fifths as luminous. Dust has been detected around it but there is no hard evidence that Tau Ceti has a planetary or even a stellar companion. It appears, however, to be an optical double, with a 13th-magnitude red dwarf of spectral class M lying 90′ away from it. m_v : 3.5; M_v : 5.8; spectral type: G8 Vp; distance: 3.65 pc.

Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006

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References in periodicals archive

From the scouting reports, planet Tau Ceti e seems perfect: lush and verdant, with oxygen, water, and twenty-two-hour days.

Tyler, Bridget. The Pioneer

Taylor's Bringers of Hell (9781481483049, $23.00) adds to the Tau Ceti Agenda series with a military story to accompany One Good Soldier, and continues the gripping tale of a war with the alien invaders the Chiata Horde.

Baen Books

ASTRONOMERS USED an innovative method to detect four super-Earth-size exoplanet candidates orbiting Tau Ceti, a Sun-like star 12 light-years away.

Four Planets for Tau Ceti

The worlds circle the star Tau Ceti, which is 12 light years or around 70trillion miles away, in a system of four Earth-sized planets.

Scientists find two planets 'ripe for colonisation'

Kill Before Dying is part of the Tau Ceti Agenda series, and represents military sci-fi at its best.

Kill before dying

Aiming at planets of the star Tau Ceti, the ship has been traveling for 160 years, and many earthling generations have already lived and died during this pursuit.

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The Tau Ceti system, popularised in many science fiction stories and featured in the TV series Star Trek, is known to host as many as five planets.

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The time line for the SETI series of books stretches over a time period from initial extraterrestrial radio signal discovery by main character Sam Alexander to direct confrontation between the human race on Earth and the humanoid race on a planet orbiting the star Tau Ceti, 11.8 light years from Planet Earth.

Book Series Price Reductions

Table 1: QCM Multi-Planet m Values System Mass N m Values b HD 10180 1.055 9 3,5,6,7,10,11,14,24 0.23 Sun 1 8 3,4,5,6,12,17,25,31 0.77 HD 40307 0.752 6 8,11,14,17,20,29 0.10 Kepler-11 0.954 6 10,11,13,15,17,23 0.13 Kepler-20 0.912 5 14,17,21,25,40 0.06 Kepler-33 1.291 5 8,11,13,15,16 0.16 Kepler-62 0.690 5 6,8,9,17,22 0.14 Tau Ceti 0.783 5 8,11,16,19,30 0.15 55 Cancri 1.026 5 4,10,16,27,76 0.13 GJ 581 0.311 4 7,9,12,21 0.05 GJ 676A 0.71 4 3,6,20,34 0.25 GJ876 0.334 4 5,13,17,22 0.07 HR 8799 1.472 4 12,16,20,27 1.65 Mu Arae 1.077 4 4,12,15,29 0.38 Ups Andr 1.01 4 2,10,18,27 0.42

Multi-planet exosystems all obey orbital angular momentum quantization per unit mass predicted by quantum celestial mechanics (QCM)

After analysing about 6000 measurements of the star Tau Ceti's velocity, scientists believe slight inconsistencies in its speed and direction are being caused by the gravitational pull of other celestial bodies.

5 new planets close to Earth found