This artist’s impression shows Barnard b, a sub-Earth-mass planet that was discovered orbiting Barnard’s star. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
The thing about exoplanets is that astronomers don’t see them the way most people think they do. Part of the reason for that is the way we announce them. Whenever an interesting exoplanet is discovered, the press release usually has colorful artwork showing oceans, mountains, and clouds. Something visually captivating like the image above. But the reality is that we have only imaged a few exoplanets directly, and even then, they appear only as small fuzzy blobs. Most of the known exoplanets were discovered by the transit method, where the star dims slightly as the planet passes in front of it. So what astronomers actually see is a periodic flickering of starlight.
Artist depiction of the surface of a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Barnard’s Star is a small red dwarf just six light-years from Earth. Despite its proximity, it was only noticed in 1916 when E. E. Barnard found it had a particularly high proper motion. It had appeared in photographic plates taken by Harvard Observatory in the late 1800s, but as a small dim star, no one took notice of it. Since its discovery, Barnard’s Star has been one of the most studied red dwarfs.
The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth — a so-called super-Earth. Data from a worldwide array of telescopes, including ESO’s planet-hunting HARPS instrument, have revealed this frozen, dimly lit world. The newly discovered planet is the second-closest known exoplanet to the Earth and orbits the fastest moving star in the night sky. This image shows an artist’s impression of the planet’s surface. Credit: ESO
In 2018, scientists announced the discovery of a extrasolar planet orbiting Barnard’s star, an M-type (red dwarf) that is just 6 light years away. Using the Radial Velocity method, the research team responsible for the discovery determined that this exoplanet (Barnard’s Star b) was at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth and experienced average surface temperatures of about -170 °C (-274 °F) – making it both a “Super-Earth” and “ice planet”.
Based on these findings, it was a foregone conclusion that Barnard b would be hostile to life as we know it. But according to new study by a team of researchers from Villanova University and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), it is possible – assuming the planet has a hot iron/nickel core and experiences enhanced geothermal activity – that this giant iceball of a planet could actually support life.
The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth — a so-called super-Earth. Data from a worldwide array of telescopes, including ESO’s planet-hunting HARPS instrument, have revealed this frozen, dimly lit world. The newly discovered planet is the second-closest known exoplanet to the Earth and orbits the fastest moving star in the night sky. This image shows an artist’s impression of the planet’s surface. Credit: ESO
In the course of searching for extra-solar planets, some very interesting finds have been made. Some of them have even occurred within our own galactic neighborhood. Just two years ago, astronomers from the Red Dots and CARMENES campaigns announced the discovery of Proxima b, a rocky planet that orbits within the habitable zone of our nearest stellar neighbor – Proxima Centauri.
This rocky world, which may be habitable, remains the closest exoplanet ever discovered to our Solar System. A few days ago (on Nov. 14th), Red Dots and CARMENES announced another find: a rocky planet orbiting Barnard’s star, which is just 6 light years from Earth. This planet, Barnard’s Star b, is now the second closest exoplanet to our Solar System, and the closest planet to orbit a single star.
The night sky, is the night sky, is the night sky. The constellations you learned as a child are the same constellations that you see today. Ancient people recognized these same constellations. Oh sure, they might not have had the same name for it, but essentially, we see what they saw.
But when you see animations of galaxies, especially as they come together and collide, you see the stars buzzing around like angry bees. We know that the stars can have motions, and yet, we don’t see them moving?
How fast are they moving, and will we ever be able to tell?
Stars, of course, do move. It’s just that the distances are so great that it’s very difficult to tell. But astronomers have been studying their position for thousands of years. Tracking the position and movements of the stars is known as astrometry.
We trace the history of astrometry back to 190 BC, when the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus first created a catalog of the 850 brightest stars in the sky and their position. His student Ptolemy followed up with his own observations of the night sky, creating his important document: the Almagest.
Printed rendition of a geocentric cosmological model from Cosmographia, Antwerp, 1539. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Fastfission
In the Almagest, Ptolemy laid out his theory for an Earth-centric Universe, with the Moon, Sun, planets and stars in concentric crystal spheres that rotated around the planet. He was wrong about the Universe, of course, but his charts and tables were incredibly accurate, measuring the brightness and location of more than 1,000 stars.
A thousand years later, the Arabic astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi completed an even more detailed measurement of the sky using an astrolabe.
One of the most famous astronomers in history was the Danish Tycho Brahe. He was renowned for his ability to measure the position of stars, and built incredibly precise instruments for the time to do the job. He measured the positions of stars to within 15 to 35 arcseconds of accuracy. Just for comparison, a human hair, held 10 meters away is an arcsecond wide.
Also, I’m required to inform you that Brahe had a fake nose. He lost his in a duel, but had a brass replacement made.
In 1807, Friedrich Bessel was the first astronomer to measure the distance to a nearby star 61 Cygni. He used the technique of parallax, by measuring the angle to the star when the Earth was on one side of the Sun, and then measuring it again 6 months later when the Earth was on the other side.
With parallax technique, astronomers observe object at opposite ends of Earth’s orbit around the Sun to precisely measure its distance. Credit: Alexandra Angelich, NRAO/AUI/NSF.
Over the course of this period, this relatively closer star moves slightly back and forth against the more distant background of the galaxy.
And over the next two centuries, other astronomers further refined this technique, getting better and better at figuring out the distance and motions of stars.
But to really track the positions and motions of stars, we needed to go to space. In 1989, the European Space Agency launched their Hipparcos mission, named after the Greek astronomer we talked about earlier. Its job was to measure the position and motion of the nearby stars in the Milky Way. Over the course of its mission, Hipparcos accurately measured 118,000 stars, and provided rough calculations for another 2 million stars.
That was useful, and astronomers have relied on it ever since, but something better has arrived, and its name is Gaia.
Launched in December 2013, the European Space Agency’s Gaia in is in the process of mapping out a billion stars in the Milky Way. That’s billion, with a B, and accounts for about 1% of the stars in the galaxy. The spacecraft will track the motion of 150 million stars, telling us where everything is going over time. It will be a mind bending accomplishment. Hipparchus would be proud.
With the most precise measurements, taken year after year, the motions of the stars can indeed be calculated. Although they’re not enough to see with the unaided eye, over thousands and tens of thousands of years, the positions of the stars change dramatically in the sky.
The familiar stars in the Big Dipper, for example, look how they do today. But if you go forward or backward in time, the positions of the stars look very different, and eventually completely unrecognizable.
When a star is moving sideways across the sky, astronomers call this “proper motion”. The speed a star moves is typically about 0.1 arc second per year. This is almost imperceptible, but over the course of 2000 years, for example, a typical star would have moved across the sky by about half a degree, or the width of the Moon in the sky.
A 20 year animation showing the proper motion of Barnard’s Star. Credit: Steve Quirk, images in the Public Domain.
The star with the fastest proper motion that we know of is Barnard’s star, zipping through the sky at 10.25 arcseconds a year. In that same 2000 year period, it would have moved 5.5 degrees, or about 11 times the width of your hand. Very fast.
When a star is moving toward or away from us, astronomers call that radial velocity. They measure this by calculating the doppler shift. The light from stars moving towards us is shifted towards the blue side of the spectrum, while stars moving away from us are red-shifted.
Between the proper motion and redshift, you can get a precise calculation for the exact path a star is moving in the sky.
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
We know, for example, that the dwarf star Hipparcos 85605 is moving rapidly towards us. It’s 16 light-years away right now, but in the next few hundred thousand years, it’s going to get as close as .13 light-years away, or about 8,200 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. This won’t cause us any direct effect, but the gravitational interaction from the star could kick a bunch of comets out of the Oort cloud and send them down towards the inner Solar System.
The motions of the stars is fairly gentle, jostling through gravitational interactions as they orbit around the center of the Milky Way. But there are other, more catastrophic events that can make stars move much more quickly through space.
When a binary pair of stars gets too close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, one can be consumed by the black hole. The other now has the velocity, without the added mass of its companion. This gives it a high-velocity kick. About once every 100,000 years, a star is kicked right out of the Milky Way from the galactic center.
A rogue star being kicked out of a galaxy. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Another situation can happen where a smaller star is orbiting around a supermassive companion. Over time, the massive star bloats up as supergiant and then detonates as a supernova. Like a stone released from a sling, the smaller star is no longer held in place by gravity, and it hurtles out into space at incredible speeds.
Astronomers have detected these hypervelocity stars moving at 1.1 million kilometers per hour relative to the center of the Milky Way.
All of the methods of stellar motion that I talked about so far are natural. But can you imagine a future civilization that becomes so powerful it could move the stars themselves?
In 1987, the Russian astrophysicist Leonid Shkadov presented a technique that could move a star over vast lengths of time. By building a huge mirror and positioning it on one side of a star, the star itself could act like a thruster.
An example of a stellar engine using a mirror and a Dyson Swarm. Credit: Vedexent at English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photons from the star would reflect off the mirror, imparting momentum like a solar sail. The mirror itself would be massive enough that its gravity would attract the star, but the light pressure from the star would keep it from falling in. This would create a slow but steady pressure on the other side of the star, accelerating it in whatever direction the civilization wanted.
Over the course of a few billion years, a star could be relocated pretty much anywhere a civilization wanted within its host galaxy.
This would be a true Type III Civilization. A vast empire with such power and capability that they can rearrange the stars in their entire galaxy into a configuration that they find more useful. Maybe they arrange all the stars into a vast sphere, or some kind of geometric object, to minimize transit and communication times. Or maybe it makes more sense to push them all into a clean flat disk.
Amazingly, astronomers have actually gone looking for galaxies like this. In theory, a galaxy under control by a Type III Civilization should be obvious by the wavelength of light they give off. But so far, none have turned up. It’s all normal, natural galaxies as far as we can see in all directions.
For our short lifetimes, it appears as if the sky is frozen. The stars remain in their exact positions forever, but if you could speed up time, you’d see that everything is in motion, all the time, with stars moving back and forth, like airplanes across the sky. You just need to be patient to see it.
It now covers 9 years (9 animation frames) from 2007 to 2015 (July). Nothing much has changed but for its location keeps moving north. For those looking to find it visually the arrowhead asterism to the south seen in the full frame image which is about a half degree wide and a third of a degree high. so fits a medium power telescope field of view. The galaxy near the bottom of the image is CGCG 056-003, a 15.6 magnitude galaxy some 360 million light-years distant and 85,000 light-years across. Credit: Rick Johnson
Tucked away in northern Ophiuchus and well-placed for observing from spring through fall is one of the most remarkable objects in the sky — Barnard’s Star. A magnitude +9.5 red dwarf wouldn’t normally catch our attention were it not for the fact that it speeds across the sky faster than any other star known.
Incredibly, you can actually see its motion with a small telescope simply by dropping by once a year for 2-3 years and taking note of its position against the background stars. For one amateur astronomer, recording its wandering ways became a 9-year mission.
This map shows the sky facing south-southwest around 9 o’clock local time in late September. Barnard’s Star is located 1° NW of the 4.8-magnitude star 66 Ophiuchi on the northern fringe of the loose open cluster Melotte 186. Use the more detailed map below to pinpoint the star’s location. Source: Stellarium
Located just 6 light years from Earth, making it the closest star beyond the Sun except for the Alpha Centauri system, Barnard’s Star dashes along at 10.3 arc seconds a year. OK, that doesn’t sound like much, but over the course of a human lifetime it moves a quarter of a degree or half a Full Moon, a distance large enough to be easily perceived with the naked eye.
Barnard’s Star is a very low mass red dwarf star 1.9 times Jupiter’s diameter only 6 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. Credit: Wikipedia with additions by the author
This fleet-footed luminary was first spotted by the American astronomer E.E. Barnard in 1916. With a proper motion even greater than the triple star Alpha Centauri, we’ve since learned that the star’s speed is truly phenomenal; it zips along at 86 miles a second (139 km/sec) relative to the Sun. As the stellar dwarf moves north, it’s simultaneously headed in our direction.
Based on its high velocity and low “metal” content, Barnard’s Star is believed to be a member of the galactic bulge, a fastness of ancient stars formed early on in the Milky Way galaxy’s evolution. Metals in astronomy refer to elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, the fundamental building blocks of stars. That’s pretty much all that was around when the first generation of suns formed about 100 million years after the Big Bang.
Generally, the lower a star’s metal content, the more ancient it is as earlier generations only had the simplest elements on hand. More complex elements like lithium, carbon, oxygen and all the rest had to be cooked up the earliest stars’ interiors and then released in supernovae explosions where they later became incorporated in metal-rich stars like our Sun.
All this to say that Barnard’s Star is an interloper, a visitor from another realm of the galaxy here to take us on a journey across the years. It certainly got the attention of Lincoln, Nebraska amateur Rick Johnson, who first learned of the famous dwarf in 1957.
Close-up map showing Barnard’s Star’s position every 5 years from 2015 to 2030. Your guide star, 66 Ophiuchi, also shown on the first map, is at lower left. Stars are numbered with magnitudes and a 15 arc minute scale bar is at lower right. North is up. The line through the two 12th-magnitude stars will help you gauge Barnard’s movement in the coming few years. Click for a larger map.
“One of the first things I imaged was Barnard’s Star on the off chance I could see its motion,” wrote Johnson, who used a cheap 400mm lens on a homemade tracking mount. “Taking it a couple months later didn’t show any obvious motion, though I thought I saw it move slightly. So I took another image the following year and the motion was obvious.”
Many years later in 2005, Johnson moved to very dark skies, upgraded his equipment and purchased a good digital camera. Barnard’s Star continued to tug at his mind.
“Again one of my first thoughts was Barnard’s Star. The idea of an animation however didn’t hit until later, so my exposure times were all over the map. This made the first frames hard to match.” Later, he standardized the exposures and then assembled the individual images into a color animation.
This diagram illustrates the locations of the star systems closest to the Sun along with the dates of discovery. NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, found two of the four closest systems: the binary brown dwarf WISE 1049-5319 and the brown dwarf WISE J085510.83-071442.5. The closest system to the Sun is a trio of stars that consists of Alpha Centauri, a close companion to it and Proxima Centauri. Credit: NASA / Penn State
“Now the system is programed to take it each July,” he added. I’m automated, so its all automatic now.” Johnson said the Barnard video is his most popular of many he’s made over the years including short animations of the eye-catching Comet C/2006 M4 SWAN and Near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55.
With Johnson’s wonderful animation in your mind’s eye, I encourage you to use the maps provided to track down the star yourself the next clear night. To find it, first locate 66 Ophiuchi (mag. 4.8) just above the little triangle of 4th magnitude stars a short distance east or left of Beta Ophiuchi. Then use the detailed map to star hop ~1° to the northwest to Barnard’s Star.
Barnard’s Star, a red dwarf low in metals, is very ancient with an age between 7 and 12 billion years. Like people, older stars slow down and Barnard’s is no exception with a rotation rate of 150 days. Heading in the Sun’s direction, the star will come closest to our Solar System around the year 11,800 A.D. at a distance of just 3.75 light years. Credit: NASA
It’s easily visible in a 3-inch or larger telescope. Use as high a magnification as conditions will allow to make a sketch of the star’s current position, showing it in relation to nearby field stars. Or take a photograph. Next summer, when you return to the field, sketch it again. If you’ve taken the time to accurately note the star’s position, you might see motion in just a year. If not, be patient and return the following year.
Most stars are too far away for us to detect motion either with the naked eye or telescope in our lifetime. Barnard’s presents a rare opportunity to witness the grand cycling of stars around the galaxy otherwise denied our short lives. Chase it.
An artist's conception of a red dwarf solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
They’re nearby, they’re common and — at least in the latest exoplanet newsflashes hot off the cyber-press — they’re hot. We’re talking about red dwarf stars, those “salt of the galaxy” stars that litter the Milky Way. And while it’s true that there are more of “them” than there are of “us,” not a single one is bright enough to be seen with the naked eye from the skies of Earth.
A reader recently brought up an engaging discussion of what red dwarfs might be within reach of a backyard telescope, and thus this handy compilation was born.
Of course, red dwarfs are big news as possible hosts for life-bearing planets. Though the habitable zones around these stars would be very close in, these miserly stars will shine for trillions of years, giving evolution plenty of opportunity to do its thing. These stars are, however, tempestuous in nature, throwing out potentially planet sterilizing flares.
Red dwarf stars range from about 7.5% the mass of our Sun up to 50%. Our Sun is very nearly equivalent 1000 Jupiters in mass, thus the range of red dwarf stars runs right about from 75 to 500 Jupiter masses.
For this list, we considered red dwarf stars brighter than +10th magnitude, with the single exception of 40 Eridani C as noted.
The closest stars within 14 light years of our solar system. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain graphic.
I know what you’re thinking… what about the closest? At magnitude +11, Proxima Centauri in the Alpha Centauri triple star system 4.7 light years distant didn’t quite make the cut. Barnard’s Star (see below) is the closest in this regard. Interestingly, the brown dwarf pair Luhman 16 was discovered just last year at 6.6 light years distant.
Also, do not confuse red dwarfs with massive carbon stars. In fact, red dwarfs actually appear to have more of an orange hue visually! Still, with the wealth of artist’s conceptions (see above) out there, we’re probably stuck with the idea of crimson looking red dwarf stars for some time to come.
Star
Magnitude
Constellation
R.A.
Dec
Groombridge 34
+8/11(v)
Andromeda
00h 18’
+44 01’
40 Eridani C
+11
Eridanus
04h 15’
-07 39’
AX Microscopii/Lacaille 8760
+6.7
Microscopium
21h 17’
-38 52’
Barnard’s Star
+9.5
Ophiuchus
17h 58’
+04 42’
Kapteyn’s Star
+8.9
Pictor
05h 12’
-45 01’
Lalande 21185
+7.5
Ursa Major
11h 03’
+35 58’
Lacaille 9352
+7.3
Piscis Austrinus
23h 06’
-35 51’
Struve 2398
+9.0
Draco
18h 43’
+59 37’
Luyten’s Star
+9.9
Canis Minor
07h 27’
+05 14’
Gliese 687
+9.2
Draco
17h 36’
+68 20’
Gliese 674
+9.9
Ara
17h 29’
-46 54’
Gliese 412
+8.7
Ursa Major
11h 05’
+43 32’
AD Leonis
+9.3
Leo
10h 20’
+19 52’
Gliese 832
+8.7
Grus
21h 34’
-49 01’
Notes on each:
Groombridge 34: Located less than a degree from the +6th magnitude star 26 Andromedae in the general region of the famous galaxy M31, Groombridge 34 was discovered back in 1860 and has a large proper motion of 2.9″ arc seconds per year.
Locating Groombridge 34. Created using Stellarium.
40 Eridani C: Our sole exception to the “10th magnitude or brighter” rule for this list, this multiple system is unique for containing a white dwarf, red dwarf and a main sequence K-type star all within range of a backyard telescope. In sci-fi mythos, 40 Eridani is also the host star for the planet Richese in Dune and the controversial location for Vulcan of Star Trek fame.
Locating 40 Eridani. Created using Stellarium.
AX Microscopii: Also known as Lacaille 8760, AX Microscopii is 12.9 light years distant and is the brightest red dwarf as seen from the Earth at just below naked eye visibility at magnitude +6.7.
A 20 year animation showing the proper motion of Barnard’s Star. Credit: Steve Quirk, images in the Public Domain.
Barnard’s Star: the second closest star system to our solar system next to Alpha Centuari and the closest solitary red dwarf star at six light years distant, Barnard’s Star also exhibits the highest proper motion of any star at 10.3” arc seconds per year. The center of many controversial exoplanet claims in the 20th century, it’s kind of a cosmic irony that in this era of 1790 exoplanets and counting, planets have yet to be discovered around Barnard’s Star!
Kapteyn’s Star: Discovered by Jacobus Kapteyn in 1898, this red dwarf orbits the galaxy in a retrograde motion and is the closest halo star to us at 12.76 light years distant.
Lalande 21185: currently 8.3 light years away, Lalande 21185 will pass 4.65 light years from Earth and be visible to the naked eye in just under 20,000 years.
Lacaille 9352: 10.7 light years distant, this was the first red dwarf star to have its angular diameter measured by the VLT interferometer in 2001.
Struve 2398: A binary flare star system consisting of two +9th magnitude red dwarfs orbiting each other 56 astronomical units apart and 11.5 light years distant.
Luyten’s Star: 12.36 light years distant, this star is only 1.2 light years from the bright star Procyon, which would appear brighter than Venus for any planet orbiting Luyten’s Star.
Gliese 687: 15 light years distant, Gliese 687 is known to have a Neptune-mass planet in a 38 day orbit.
Gliese 674: Located 15 light years distant, ESO’s HARPS spectrograph detected a companion 12 times the mass of Jupiter that is either a high mass exoplanet or a low mass brown dwarf.
Gliese 412: 16 light years distant, this system also contains a +15th magnitude secondary companion 190 Astronomical Units from its primary.
AD Leonis: A variable flare star in the constellation Leo about 16 light years distant.
Gliese 832:Located 16 light years distant, this star is known to have a 0.6x Jupiter mass exoplanet in a 3,416 day orbit.
The closest stars to our solar system over the next 80,000 years. Credit: FrancescoA under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Consider this list a teaser, a telescopic appetizer for a curious class of often overlooked objects. Don’t see you fave on the list? Want to see more on individual objects, or similar lists of quasars, white dwarfs, etc in the range of backyard telescopes in the future? Let us know. And while it’s true that such stars may not have a splashy appearance in the eyepiece, part of the fun comes from knowing what you’re seeing. Some of these stars have a relatively high proper motion, and it would be an interesting challenge for a backyard astrophotographer to build an animation of this over a period of years. Hey, I’m just throwing that out project out there, we’ve got lots more in the files…
