Barnard's Star: Nearby Star with rapid proper motion in Ophiuchus

SEDS ^ | Hartmut Frommert & Christine Kronberg

[SunkenCiv]

Also cataloged as Munich 15040 or LFT 1385, Barnard's Star was discovered in 1916 by E.E. Barnard to have the largest known proper motion of all stars, 10.29 arc seconds per year, by comparing photographic plates obtained in 1894 and 1916, and later tracing it back to 1888 in E. Pickering's plate archive. This star moves apparently fast between the background stars in Ophiuchus, needing only about 350 years for 1 degree, in almost exactly North direction (Burnham gives a position angle of 356 degrees).

This star is the second nearest to our Solar System at 5.97 light years, only triple star Alpha Centauri is closer. From this distance, it follows that the fast apparent motion corresponds to an unusually high velocity. In addition, this star is approaching us rapidly at 87 miles per second, so that the combination of both indicates a space velocity of of about 103 miles per second. According to Burnham, the star will reach a minimum distance of less then 4 light years in about 8,000 years, when its proper motion will have reached 25 arc seconds per year and its brightness will be about magnitude 8.6...

It was longly tried to investigate this star's motion for perturbations due to planet-sized companions, and P. van de Kamp had announced the discovery of the presence of at least one planet of 1.5 times the mass of Jupiter at a separation of 2.4 arc seconds, or 4 Astronomical Units. However, after a decade-long discussion, this discovery could still not be verified, and more recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have not yet given evidence of any large planet near this star.

[SunkenCiv]

Right Ascension	17:58 (h:m)
Declination	+04:41 (deg:m)
Distance	5.97 (ly)
Visual brightness	9.56 (mag)
Spectral type	M3.8V

Motion of Barnards Star captured: left 1997 (Jack Schmidling), right 1950 (POSS)

[SunkenCiv]

Barnard's Star Rockets through the heavens in this dramatic video

[SunkenCiv]

“extra, extra” to APoD members.

[SunkenCiv]

“extra, extra” to APoD members.

[SunkenCiv]

http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/barnard.html

[SunkenCiv]

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/01/exoplanet/

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

http://www.nightskyinfo.com/archive/barnard_star/

[onyx]

Thank you very much, SunkenCiv!

[Ken H]

The headline sounds a bit risque, eh wot?

[BenLurkin]

When that thing comes spinning into our solar system, it’s going to Ophiuchus up real bad.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks.

[VaRepublican]

wait just one minute.....is there or is there not a V pattern of lights in upper right hand corner? just sayin...

[going hot]

That’s the One Way sign for all local stars and such.

[hattend]

Indeed, no class M dwarf ever born in all the history of the Galaxy has ever died.

How do we know this? Yes, I'm serious.

In the whole HISTORY OF THE GALAXY, this one thing has never happened?

[MikeD]

The lifetime of a star is determined by its initial mass. As it turns out, the initial mass of a star tracks with its color, so the massive stars are blue and hot, while the small stars are red and cool. The hotter and more massive stars burn out faster than the small cool stars. I know it’s counter-intuitive, but the way the hydrogen burning rate works out as a function of mass, the burn rate goes up faster than the available mass. The lifetime of hot massive stars is measured in tens of millions of years, an instant on the cosmic scale. Cool red stars, on the other hand, are expected to live for tens of billions of years, longer than the current age of the universe.

Anyway, the other way to check stellar lifetime is to observe globular clusters where all of the stars formed at the same time. A number of these clusters have no hot blue stars because they have all “died,” but the yellow and red stars remain.

MD, temporarily donning his “professional astronomer” hat

[hattend]

Just saying... in the “Whole History Of The Galaxy”?

That’s a pretty damn long time. We have been studying the universe for what...since some Arab started making stick figures out of star positions?

Pretty arrogant to say it has NEVER happened in the WHOLE HISTORY OF THE GALAXY.

But then, we are an arrogant people.

[chesty_puller]

I see one in the upper left corner.