# Barnard's Star (Barnard's Runaway Star)

Barnard's Star (Barnard's Runaway Star) is a star in the constellation Ophiuchus, magnitude 9.5.

**The star that moves fastest across our sky — an ancient red dwarf with four tiny planets.**

No star crosses our sky faster. In 1916 Edward Emerson Barnard measured its motion: 10.3 arcseconds a year, the highest of any known star. In a human lifetime it slides about a quarter of a degree — half the [apparent width](https://astropilot.space/glossary/angular-size) of the full Moon. It is the nearest star in the northern half of the sky, and the nearest single star after the three of Alpha Centauri.

Yet it is far too faint to see with the naked eye. Barnard’s Star is a [red dwarf](https://astropilot.space/glossary/spectral-type) with 16% of the Sun’s mass and about a fifth of its width, giving out barely a third of a percent of the Sun’s light. It is ancient, too — 7 to 12 billion years old — though it can still surprise: in 1998 it let off a powerful flare.

For decades it was a cautionary tale. From 1963 Peter van de Kamp claimed giant planets around it, until in 1973 other astronomers showed the signal was an artefact, linked to work on his telescope’s lens. Real planets were finally confirmed in 2024–2025: four small worlds, each less massive than Earth, all orbiting closer to the star than its habitable zone.

Barnard's Star (Barnard's Runaway Star) is 6 light-years away: the light we see from it set off in 2020, around the time the James Webb Space Telescope was launched.

## Did you know?

- **Heading our way.** Barnard’s Star is approaching at about 110 kilometres a second. Around AD 11,800 it will pass closest to the Sun — and still be too faint to see without a telescope.
- **A featherweight planet.** Barnard’s Star e has at least 0.19 times Earth’s mass, making it the lightest exoplanet yet found from the wobble it gives its star.
- **Target of a starship study.** In the 1970s the British Interplanetary Society’s Project Daedalus designed an uncrewed, fusion-powered probe to fly to Barnard’s Star.

A 9.5-magnitude red dwarf, invisible to the naked eye, about three and a half degrees east of Cebalrai (Beta Ophiuchi). Sketch or photograph its field and return after a few years: it creeps across the background stars faster than any other star.

## When and where to see it

It is best placed in the evening sky around July, when it crosses the meridian at about 10 pm local time (around midnight in June). It can be seen from everywhere north of 85°S and never sets north of 85°N.

At its highest it stands 45° up from 50°N, 60° up from 35°N, 85° up from the equator, 50° up from 35°S.

## Facts

- Type: Star
- Constellation: Ophiuchus
- Designations: Barnard's Runaway Star, Barnard Star, HIP 87937
- Magnitude: 9.5
- Position: RA 17h 57.8m, Dec +4° 42′ (J2000)
- Spectral type: M4V
- Colour: orange-red (B−V 1.73)
- Distance: 6 light-years
- Discovered: E. E. Barnard, 1916, Measured its record motion; it had already appeared on Harvard plates in 1888 and 1890

Open AstroPilot to see when Barnard's Star (Barnard's Runaway Star) is highest tonight from your location, how easy it is with your telescope or binoculars, and an eyepiece view. https://astropilot.space/object/barnards-star