Barnard's Star
From Slackerpedia Galactica
Barnard's Star is the closest star after the triple star system Alpha Centauri. It is classified as a red dwarf. Note, however, that the classification may be considered offensive. Please use the term size-challenged star instead.
Despite being a real old timer with an age of well over 10 billion years (that's over twice the age of our middle-aged Sun), it's still kicking hard and will do that for a very long time to come, several tens of billions of years. When asked for the secret of its long life, it replied: "It's all about mass. Just don't gain much weight, and you'll stay healty."
Although the star has been able to produce some flares, a sign of youth, its rotational speed betrays its age. Stars rotate slower as they age, and in the case of Barnard's Star the period is a whopping 140 days (compared to the Sun's 25 days, which is quite long compared to many stars).
Barnard's Star formed in a more tumultous times, when our Milky Way galaxy hadn't yet matured into its gracious shape of a spiral galaxy. As a halo star, the star spends most of its time far above or below the plane of the galaxy. This and the fact that it is so close make it the fastest star in the sky.
In the 1960s it was reported that the star's orbit seemed to sway back and forth like an astronomer who has been partying too heavily. Since stars can't get intoxicated, it was clear that there was something tugging the star: something not quite massive enough to be a star--in other words, an extrasolar planet. The discovery created, understandably, a lot of fuss -- the first planet beyond our Solar System! The partying stopped abruptly when it became clear that the observations were flawed. It now appears that the star travels as straight as an arrow. To add an insult to injury, not even the Hubble Space Telescope has been able detect any disturbances on its path.
