Barnard's Star
Where is Barnard's Star?
Look southwest, about 35° up at 20:20 in Ophiuchus. It sinks lower through the evening and sets at 00:28.
- Rises
- 11:31
- Highest
- 18:02
- Sets
- 00:28
- Best after dark
- 20:20 · 35°
Can I see Barnard's Star?
No. The planets of Barnard's Star can’t be seen with the eye, binoculars or any amateur telescope: they are lost in their star’s light. What you can do is point toward the star.
From London tonight, the star Barnard's Star is above the horizon after dark. It’s highest soon after dark, around 20:20, in the southwest at 35°.
Why is Barnard's Star interesting?
Barnard's Star has 4 known planets, discovered in 2024 by the radial velocity method.
All of them are close to Earth’s size or mass, based on the catalog values.
At about 6.0 light-years, it is one of the closest planetary systems to the Sun.
What can you see?
Eyes
Direction onlyNot visible. The star is around magnitude 9.5.
Binoculars
Just within reach of good binoculars under dark skies, with a detailed chart.
Telescope
Easy in a small telescope as a faint reddish star. Photographs taken years apart show it moving. The planets themselves can’t be seen with any backyard telescope.
About
Barnard’s Star is the closest single star to the Sun after the Alpha Centauri system, about 6 light-years away. It is a small, old red dwarf.
It moves across the sky faster than any other star, about the width of the full Moon in around 180 years.
Barnard’s Star has a long history of planet claims that didn’t hold up. In 2024 and 2025, astronomers announced four small rocky planets orbiting it, all closer to the star than Mercury is to the Sun and too hot for liquid water.
The star is named after Edward Emerson Barnard, who measured its fast motion in 1916. It is several billion years old, older than the Sun.
Its four known planets are smaller than Earth, each with a fraction of Earth’s mass, and they orbit in just a few days.
The Barnard's Star system
| Planet | Mass | Radius | Orbit | From star | Found | Method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barnard's star d | 0.25 M⊕ | — | 2.34 days | 0.0188 AU | 2024 | Radial Velocity |
| Barnard's star b | 0.29 M⊕ | — | 3.15 days | 0.0229 AU | 2024 | Radial Velocity |
| Barnard's star c | 0.35 M⊕ | — | 4.12 days | 0.0274 AU | 2024 | Radial Velocity |
| Barnard's star e | 0.19 M⊕ | — | 6.74 days | 0.0381 AU | 2024 | Radial Velocity |
Questions
Can I see Barnard’s Star’s planets?
Why does Barnard’s Star move so fast across the sky?
Sources: The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia (CC BY 4.0); star chart: Wikidata (CC0). Positions computed for your place and time with astronomy-engine. Data & Licences