h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Alpha Centauri is a tiny little pinprick of light that can be seen in the night sky from Earth. It's often accompanied by a whole bunch of other little pinpricks of light in the vast blackness of night so it's a little difficult to distinguish from the rest of them, unless of course you spend several years going to fancy and expensive colleges that teach you how to distinguish one little pinprick of light from another."

Alpha Centauri is actually the 3rd brightest star in the sky and is incredibly easy to distinguish from its not-so-bright apparent neighbours. It has distinct yellowish colour and so cannot be confused with Sirius, Canopus or Vega which are white - blue-white in the case of Vega (in any case Vega is a Northern star) and is far away from any planets. I was fortunate to see the three brightest stars in the sky for myself when I did some programming work in Johannesburg a few years ago and totally bamboozled most of the locals by being interested in something other than sport. Far from an expensive college education a ten second freebie glance at a star map in a bookshop will show you how to find it - and I apologise to the bookshop in question for not buying the book, but I assure them that did purchase a Madam & Eve compendium there by way of atonement.

We can need such competent people at A743591.