 It is at a distance of 27 light years (8.4 pc), a figure calculated by accurate observations of the star's relative movement with respect to the background stars during the course of an Earth year.For many years, scientists were of the opinion that such young stars were present only in very distant star-forming regions like the Orion nebula, but with the advent of new all-sky survey techniques this has proved to be incorrect.AP Columbae is about 40 million years old, which is very young compared to the age of the Earth; it formed after the dinosaurs became extinct and during a period when mammals were beginning to dominate the Earth.