Top: medians of the distance versus time distributions for the 1 005 candidate encounters with β Pic that had d_min < 6 pc, calculated using the method described in Sect. 3.1. The horizontal red line marks the 6 pc limit used to select these sources based on their d_min values (middle panel of Fig. 1). Distributions with d⁵⁰ values above this line correspond to the 47 more distant, higher-dispersion encounters. The horizontal green line denotes the 2 pc critical radius. The orange points indicate the β PMG members. Bottom: same but for the 96 sources with d⁵⁰ < 2 pc. The Hill sphere of β Pic is highlighted in grey. Only 49 stars have at least a 95% empirical probability of passing within 2 pc of β Pic and are considered actual encounters (highlighted in pink).