Amateur Astronomer Chases Down Barnard’s Star – You Can Too!

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 southeast around 10:30 p.m. local time in early June. 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. Source: Stellarium
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 would be an undistinguished red dwarf in Ophiuchus were it not for its rapid motion across the sky. It measures 1.9 times Jupiter's diameter and lies only 6 light-years from Eart
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 northward march every 5 years from 2015 to 2030. Your guide star, 66 Ophiuchi, is at lower left. Stars are numbered with magnitudes and a 15? scale bar is at lower right. North is up. The line through the two 12th-magnitude stars will help you gauge Barnard's movement. Click for larger map.
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. The year when the distance to each system was determined is listed after the system's name. 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. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope helped pin down the location of the latter object. 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
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 is one of our galaxy's ancient ones with age of somewhere between 7 and 12 billion years
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.

3 Replies to “Amateur Astronomer Chases Down Barnard’s Star – You Can Too!”

  1. What a great way to present proper motion! It is a little surprising how fixed all the other stars are, which makes Barnard’s star that much more special. Its motion makes it a great outlier though it is a great in-lier. 🙂

    The color in the video seems fairly correct since its surface temperature is a little hotter than a light bulb’s tungsten filament, which glows yellowish white. Astronomy has three colors it likes: False (for scientific enhancement), Fun (white gets boring), Natural (representing about how it would look from above our atmosphere). The red star thing depiction is fun. [Its limb could be orangish red due to the change in optical depth of stars that vary from center to limb, so maybe it may look a shade redder than yellow white.]

  2. I just finished reading a book that proposed we are part of a binary system. One of the features the book put forward, was our companion would appear to move against the stationary background of stars.

    Is it possible we are in a binary system and this star is our possible companion?

    1. Hi windriders,
      Good question. Not that I’ve ever heard . Barnard’s Star has its own motion in space unrelated to the Sun’s. There are also other stars with significant proper motion like Kapteyn’s Star, Groombridge 1830 and 61 Cygni – all moving in their own directions. To our best knowledge, the Sun’s a solo player and not in a binary system with any other star.

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