Go and look for... the Barnard's star!

[Nik271]

I'm sure everybody knows about that one but here it is anyway:

Barnard's star is the closest to us after the three members of the Alpha Centauri system and so the closest star visible from the Northern hemisphere. It's also the star with fastest proper motion known: it is running along at a good clip at 10'' per year!  Edward Barnard discovered and measured it in 1916.

The star is a red dwarf with mass 1/7 of our Sun which means it is both older than the Sun and it will live much longer, for trillions of years (assuming the universe lasts that long).

Summer is the best time to see this famous star, as it transits the meridian at about 11pm summer time at about 40 degrees altitude from the UK in July.

And now comes the bad news: being a red dwarf Barnard's star is dim, only mag 9.5.

I managed to see it yesterday with Skymax 127 and 15mm EP, but really I should have been using wider EP, to aid the star hopping.

The star hop is non-trivial since you probably won't see the star itself in your finder. I started at Cebalrai (Beta Oph) then moved east to 66 Oph passing a nice optical double:

HD 162648 and HD 162649  

From 66 Oph the stars get dimmer, I moved 1 degree north west to a pair of 7-th magnitude stars in a line with 66 Oph then hopped back one step across them to an empty space and looked at the EP. And the Barnard's star was there!  Here is my last hop: 

You know you are on the right track with the last hop when you pass an 8-th magnitude star halfway.

Barnard's star is red but I think you need aperture to see this, to me it looked like just an unremarkable lonely dim star out there.  Still I'm thrilled to even find it - there  are not many red dwarfs visible in small apertures.

Go on, find it, take a look and see if you can spot the colour!

 

Nik

Edited July 22, 2021 by Nik271
typos

[John]

Nice reminder - I'll have a look when next out with a suitable scope

Back in May last year I got it with my 12 inch dob:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/355709-red-dwarf-barnards-star/

 

[Muc]

Caught this on the 15th, 120mm f/8.3 achromat. No sense of redness from it but great to see