Barnard's Star, another year

[Rob_Jn]

I've been following this star for, well quite a long time now, this year will be 20 years! The animation below comprises images taken originally in 1991 then '96' '98, 2000, 2003, 2007 and this year. The proper motion is the greatest of any star at 10.3" per annum. Over 20 years this amounts to 3.43'.

The image scale has remained the same but the images have been taken on film and 3 different CCD's!

Some more info. here from 2007.

Thanks for looking,

Rob.

[Beyond_Vision]

Amazing image Rob great to see it in motion

Regards

Kevin

[Carbon Brush]

Now that is really impressive.

[carldr]

Wow, that's amazing. It's all too easy to forgot that the stuff up there is "alive".

[dc509]

It's one of our nearest neighbours, isn't it?

[MartinB]

Wonderful sequence. Why does it move so much Rob?

[Tim]

Excellent stuff, have you sent this to the APOD guys by any chance?

[mag10]

Truly outstanding work!

You can be justly proud of this contribution to the science of astronomy.

[Sp@ce_d]

Wow, this is great.. how interesting.. 4th nearest the Sun, one of the oldest in the Milky Way. Fantastic to see this.. thanks

[haitch]

20 years OMG!

Now that really shows up the guys taking exposures over several months!

[Dave Smith]

Fantastic and inspiring piece of work. Thanks.

Dave

[RogerTheDodger]

Wow, really amazing to see that, thanks

[johnh]

Great work to catch this red devil over such a time period, please keep going.

John.

[Psychobilly]

Thanks for sharing the results of your endeavours

Peter...

[rfdesigner]

excellent. patience par excellance.

It's interesting how 99.9% of the rest of the image just doesn't change.

So far I've only seen one other object change: on the bottom edge near another star a dot appears on frame 3.

definite POW candidate.

Derek

[ollypenrice]

Truly fascinating. That is a great, great sequence and would have gladdened the heart of that finest of men, Edward Emmerson Barnard.

Olly

[foundaplanet]

Excellent, many thanks...

[Shibby]

What an awesome animation, it's fantastic (and rare) to see deep sky objects in action. And you've done a great job keeping the background consistent. Thanks for your dedication!

PS:Is it me, or does a new object appear in the 3rd frame, due left of Barnard's? Could be a hot pixel I guess (or dust on your scanner if it's film!)

[Moonshane]

superb sequence, amazing stuff.

I have never seen this but will be spending time in Ophiuchus next time out I think. if anyone fancies a look at this (I will be looking next time!) then this map seems reasonable.

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

[Rob_Jn]

Thank you very much everyone

Martin - I'm not sure why it moves so fast but I would guess it has been given a gravitational 'shove' in some distant event.

TJ - yes I did submit this to APOD in 2007 but no luck!

I'll have to check the appearance of the hot pixel and check which frame is responsible. The background is a fairly stable because of the way I overlaid each frame in PS lighten mode and the earlier frames were a much smaller field. Net result is that much of the background is from 2007.

As long as I'm here I'll keep going

Thanks again!

Rob.

[philj]

Crikey thats got a shift on. Fascinating image

Philj

[spaceboy]

How cool is that!

[lukebl]

Great project.

I've noticed one or two of my DSO images where one or more of the stars is in a slightly different position from historic images, so there are plenty which have measurable movement.

Of course, one of the reasons Barnard's Star is moving so fast is that its so darn close (only 6 light years away). Presumably Alpha and Proxima Centauri have fast proper motions too.

[Spr]

Amazing Rob,

20 year animation must be some kind of record.

Darren