Skeiðarárjökull Glacier (Photo: US Geological Survey)
The Sun follows a solitary path through the Milky Way. This cannot be said of a significant fraction of the stars in the galaxy. Many stars have companions some distant, others quite close.
In the latter case, SF authors crafting a plausible setting may need to take into account the effect of a stellar partner on habitable worlds. For example, the distance between Alpha Centauri A and B varies from 35.6 astronomical units to 11.2 AU. At their closest, A would add about 1 percent to the energy budget of a hypothetical habitable world orbiting B, while B would add 4/10