¶The New Horizons Parallax Program. Now at 46 AU, well past Pluto and Arrokoth, New Horizons is heading toward the edge of our solar system at about 14 km/s, and the mission team is looking for new ways to use the spacecraft. Last week, through the New Horizons Parallax Program, they photographed two of our nearest stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359, to compare their positions relative to those observed from Earth. “New Horizons is 2.89 light-hours closer to Proxima Centauri than Earth, but 3.74 light-hours farther from Wolf 359 than Earth.” This record-setting stellar parallax observation gives backyard astronomers (with 6-inch or larger telescopes) a chance to do their own parallax measurements and calculate the distance to these stars. While this effort is mostly for public relations, it is also the “first demonstration of using stars for interstellar navigation of a spacecraft”. Related: Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun, is 1.3 parsecs away. A parsec, at 3.26 light-years, is the distance at which an object has a parallax of one arcsecond (or 1/3600 of a degree), and is normally measured by comparing images of the object taken when the Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun (that is, unless you have a soon-to-be-interstellar spacecraft that’s sitting around twiddling its proverbial thumbs).