Barnard's Star is the nearest single star to the Sun and the fastest-moving star in our sky. Astronomers claimed planets here in the 1960s and were wrong; it took until 2024-2025, and two of the most precise spectrographs ever built, to find the real ones - four planets, every one lighter than Earth.
Fly there in 3DAll four planets together weigh about the same as Mercury and Mars combined. Detecting them meant measuring a wobble of roughly 20-50 centimetres per second in a star six light-years away - slower than walking pace.
Every one of the four orbits closer to its star than Mercury does to the Sun, and all sit well inside the habitable zone’s hot edge.
The star is around 10 billion years old - roughly twice the Sun’s age - and unusually poor in heavy elements.
| Spectral type | M4 V |
| Surface temperature | 3,195 K |
| Mass | 0.162 solar masses |
| Radius | 0.185 solar radii |
| Luminosity | 0.00355 times the Sun |
| Apparent magnitude | 9.51 |
| Age | about 10 billion years |
| Distance from the Sun | 6.0 light-years (1.8 parsecs) |
| Position (J2000) | RA 269.4521°, Dec 4.6934° |
| Constellation | Ophiuchus |
| Planet | Year | Orbit | Radius | Mass | Found |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barnard's Star d | 2.34 days | 0.0188 AU | 0.694 R⊕ estimated | 0.263 M⊕ minimum | Radial Velocity, 2025 |
| Barnard's Star b | 3.15 days | 0.0229 AU | 0.72 R⊕ estimated | 0.299 M⊕ minimum | Radial Velocity, 2024 |
| Barnard's Star c | 4.12 days | 0.0274 AU | 0.743 R⊕ estimated | 0.335 M⊕ minimum | Radial Velocity, 2025 |
| Barnard's Star e | 6.74 days | 0.0381 AU | 0.637 R⊕ estimated | 0.193 M⊕ minimum | Radial Velocity, 2025 |
Values are the NASA Exoplanet Archive’s composite parameters. A radius marked estimated comes from a mass–radius relation; a mass marked minimum is M sin i. Planet sizes and colours in the 3D view are renderings: none of these worlds has been photographed as more than a point of light.