MAQ Magazine n. 10 / February 2019
"Barnard's Star" is a very low-mass red dwarf star about six light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus. Barnard's Star is the fourth-closest known individual star to the Sun and the closest star in the Northern Hemisphere. Despite its proximity, at a dim apparent magnitude of about nine, it is not visible with the unaided eye; however, it is much brighter in the infrared than it is in visible light. The star is named for American astronomer E. E. Barnard. He was not the first to observe the star, but in 1916 he measured its proper motion as 10.3 arcseconds per year, which remains the largest known proper motion of any star relative to the Solar System.