Teegarden's Star

 In 2003 an article titled "Discovery of a New Nearby Star" was submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters by B.J. Teegarden and nine coauthors.  These researchers had discovered a high-proper-motion star lurking in NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) database.  This star is a faint (mag 15.1) red dwarf lying nearly on the ecliptic in the constellation Aries .  The star has a proper motion of 5.1"/yr, which is about half that of Barnard's Star, and is exceeded by only six other star systems.  At the time of publication a preliminary parallax estimate suggested that this star was as close as 7.8 ly, which would have made it the third closest star system to our own, after Barnard's Star.  Later data led to the best current distance estimate of 12.5 ly, which puts it in 23th place among the nearest star systems.

The mass of Teegarden's Star is about 0.093 solar masses, or 97 Jupiter masses.  Red dwarfs in this mass range have estimated lifetimes in excess of 7 trillion years.  This makes them essentially "forever stars".  There is now evidence that two earth-sized planets orbit Teegarden's Star within its nominal habitable zone.

Jupiter is currently about 3° from this star's position.  In the twenty years since this star's discovery was announced, its position has changed by the equivalent of 18 pixels in this image.  The white circle has a diameter of 100 pixels.

E-P5 + Rokinon 135mm f/2,  ISO1600, 60 s.  2-deg square.  

Click to get at the full-size image.