How far should second star be in my binary system?

For a certain reason, I needed two habitable similar earth-like planets very close to each other. After various information gathering, I gave up on double planet and gas giant moons, because tidal forces would be too high. Eventually, one solution offered itself - planets around each of two binary sun-like stars.

Now, I have two similar planets orbiting two similar stars in binary star system, both around 1 AU from their own star. Now in this post, it has been answered that with stars orbiting at ~ 100 AU, everything seems fine. But my goal is to put the two stars closer, as close as possible without causing too much mess, ideally 25-30 AU range, but would like to know if even less is possible. My main concern are tidal forces, but there might be other factors I am not taking into account.

So, how close can we put two sun-like stars together for my planets to remain Earth-like?

Yes, I am aware that at those distances, second sun would be a very bright, so bright that it would be possible to see during the day, (as for example, at 25 AU, you'd get 500~600(24x24) times less intense light from second star than from the star you orbit, which is still 800 more than Earth gets from the moon). That is one exception to Earth-like standard I'm willing to concede.

posted about 5 years ago

Failus Maximus‭

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