OK, so according to the best data I could get my hands on, Alpha Centuri 
A is about 430 light years away, and is 1.227 times the radius of our 
Sun, so about 853,400 km across. 430 light years is 4.068x10^15 km.

So, if a triangle has sides of 4.068x10^15 km and 853,400 km on either 
side of the right angle, what *the hell* is the small angle?!

By the looks of things, dividing these two distances should give me the 
tangent of the angle I seek.

   853,400 km / 4.068x10^15 km = 2.098x10^-10

   arctan 2.098x10^-10 = 1.2020x10^-8 degrees = 4.327x10^-5 arc seconds

This is a *stupidly tiny number*. If you asked POV-Ray to render this, 
and you sent out a million, billion, trillion rays, every single damned 
one would completely miss such a tiny object. It seems astonishing to me 
that such an absurdly minute object is visible at all - but Wikipedia 
claims it is...

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