sailing by the sunset

Out walking a few nights ago I saw Jupiter, quite prominently and a little to the right of it, Saturn, somewhat less prominently.

Closer to the top of the sky where I was I saw the Summer Triangle, being Vega, Altair and Deneb even though it isn't summer any longer. The former two are close proximities to our Sun and are even roughly in our neighbourhood in terms of distance from us.

Deneb, on the other hand is very much further away, very much larger and very much brighter. From this far away, Deneb looks at about the same brightness of Altair and Vega, but wow, is it ever a monster.

Other notable stars in our sky include Sirius, Arcturus and our trusty tri star system Alpha Centauri who is closest to us. 

Alpha Centauri, as mentioned, is made up of three gravitationally bonded stars, the smallest of which is called Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri has two identified exo-planets, the closest one being in the goldilocks zone of habitability. Proxima Centauri orbits around the Alpha Centauri AB star pair in a very eccentric orbit, coming closest at potentially only 3400AU. I wonder what effect that would have on the livability of that goldilocks exo-planet.