Barnard's Star

Barnard's Star is a red dwarf about six light-years from Earth. Its unusually large proper motion makes it one of the fastest-moving stars across the sky.

Proper motion: The angular change in a star's apparent position across the sky over time. Barnard's Star has the largest known proper motion among stars.
Edward Emerson Barnard: An American astronomer known for observational work, including discovering Barnard's Star's exceptional apparent motion. He identified the star's large positional shift by comparing photographic plates.
Exoplanet: A planet that orbits a star other than the Sun. The star's proximity makes it a prominent target for exoplanet searches.
Sirius: The brightest star in Earth's night sky, a nearby binary system dominated by a luminous main-sequence star. Sirius is bright chiefly because of luminosity, unlike Barnard's Star's distinction for rapid apparent motion.
Radial velocity: An object's velocity component toward or away from an observer, measured through spectral shifts. Combined with proper motion, it describes Barnard's Star's motion through space.
Proper-motion survey: A systematic search for stars whose positions change noticeably against background stars over time. Barnard's discovery emerged from comparing observations made years apart.
Barnard's Star b: A reported candidate super-Earth around Barnard's Star that was later found not to be supported by the data. The candidate illustrates how signals around this star have been tested and overturned.
Wolf 359: A faint red dwarf about 7.9 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. It is another nearby red dwarf, but Barnard's Star is closer and has greater proper motion.
Parallax: The apparent shift of a nearby object's position against distant backgrounds as the observer's viewpoint changes. Its measured parallax establishes Barnard's Star's distance.
Photographic plate: A light-sensitive glass plate used to record astronomical images before digital detectors. Historical plates made the star's displacement measurable across epochs.

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