I posted this question in the Space Exploration forum, but I think it might be more appropriate here in the Astronomy forum.

This is the thread:
Which stars are in the Local Interstellar Cloud?

Basically, I'd like to know which local stars are, and aren't, embedded in the "Local Fluff" along with the sun. I can't find any lists.

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The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

I had a look round yesterday, but I couldn't find any decent maps of the Local Fluff.

You might try fitting the picture you posted to this map of our neighbourhood. It's approx the same scale as the Fluff, 20-30ly.

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Looks good, except the picture of the Local Fluff was flat -- it didn't do a good job of representing it's 3-dimensional extent, and there weren't enough sample stars to figure out how the image had been rotated in 3-space.

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The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

The only two stars that are definitely shown as being embedded in the Local Fluff are Sol and Altair; bit it looks a lot more extensive than that.
Stars that might be in the fluff, judging by the map PraedSt posted, include Barnard's Star, 61 Cygni, Wolf 1055, and maybe 70 Ophiuchi. But since we don't know the thickness of this cloud from the published image, we can't be sure.

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Isn't Alpha Centauri in there as well? Given it's very short distance from Sol, I'd expect both systems to belong to the same cloud.

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"Science is physics and astronomy." -Me
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Judging by this map, apparently not.
Which stars are in the Local Interstellar Cloud?

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That Local Fluff image was APOD Feb 10, 2002. Maybe one of the contact pages reachable from there may lead to an involved scientist who would just love to share his/her expertise and/or graphical and/or other data.

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Meet the OOONG TOE.

Weird.

I mean it does seem close enough for it to be said to belong to the Local Fluff, though, doesn't it? It's not within the cloud, but it's still there.

Interesting picture, though.

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"Science is physics and astronomy." -Me
"There is absolutely no law in physics that prevents time travel." -Dr. Michio Kaku

Maybe Alpha Centauri cleared the space around it or something else zipped through and cleared the space around it. It may originally have been part of the Fluff (this is the first time I've heard that term).

Besides, insisting that our nearest neighbour isn't one of us just because of its source matter is racist... or fluffist.

There doesn't seem to be a list, yet. The information on the Local Fluff (and map) may have been extracted from observations by the Hubble Telescope's Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph. A report on the observations from 1995 can be found in:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1995A&A...304..461L

A summary is in Table 1 of that reference. If this is the source of the information for the plot, then the 2-D nature of the plot is because most of the stars used for finding the extent of the Local Fluff lie near the plane of the galaxy, and so the view is looking down on that plane. On the other hand, the included image (also in APOD http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap020210.html and Wikipedia) looks significantly different from that in Figure 9 of that article. You may want to check with the person who drew the graphics - Priscilla Frisch (U. Chicago).

Anyway, the thickness of the Local Fluff is negligible in the direction of beta Leo (longitude and declination 250.6, 70.8) and very small in the direction of alpha CMa (227, -9). It's greatest in the directions of alpha Lyr (67.5, 19) and beta Pic (258, -30.5). It's fairly uniform in other directions. Perhaps you can work out which stars are within it from that.

On the other hand, the website of Priscilla Frisch (http://astro.uchicago.edu/~frisch/visualization.html) suggests that this APOD image is based on some slightly earlier and less complete data from the same instrument (Hubble GHRS). The methodology is outlined in Frisch (1994), Science, v265, p1423, "Morphology and Ionization of the Interstellar Cloud Surrounding the Solar System":
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprin...423.pdf?ck=nck

Using the results from the 1995 paper I mentioned above would be better.

I hadn't realised Altair would be in there. Interesting that it's so close whilst Deneb so remote yet they both look similar as seen from here.

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Yonder is Dubhe seen on Earth tonight as it was in the days of Grover Cleveland's presidency whereas this way is Deneb seen as it was in the lifetime of Muhammed . If one somehow travelled to Deneb at very close to c then whenever you looked back you'd measure Earth as closer to you than the distance you would simultaneously measure between Earth and Dubhe.

This may be applicable: http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?J/A%2bA/346/785

Table1.dat contains a list of Hipparchos stars in the ISM (local bubble) used to calibrate distances to NaI observations.

Likewise in comparing Sirius and Procyon with the remote, superluminous bright stars in Orion.

Priscilla Frisch's page is interesting.

I didn't realise how important Adhara was as a source of UV when you are looking at the interstellar medium. This star (Epsilon Canis Majoris) is the brightest UV star in the sky as seen from Earth, and illuminates the dust all around for hundreds of light years.

Interestingly Adhara was once a lot closer to Earth, and 5 million years ago was the brightest visual star in the sky as well (according to wiki)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Canis_Majoris

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