Distance versus time distributions for the 49 encounters with β Pic that have an empirical probability of at least 95% of occurring within 2 pc. The coloured points indicate the rescaled Mahalanobis distances (ensuring a common colour scale for all stars) derived from the encounter parameters. Points above the 95^th percentile of this metric are shown in grey. The black bars represent the 95% confidence intervals in time and distance, obtained from the 2.5^th and 97.5^th percentiles of the corresponding marginal distributions for the further encounters and using the 95^th percentile to define the one-tailed distance interval for the closest ones. The central points are the 50^th percentiles. The critical radius of 2 pc is indicated by the red horizontal line. The centres of mass of binary systems, listed in Table 3, are marked at the pair [t⁵⁰, d⁵⁰] corresponding to that star.