A Close Encounter Of The Stellar Kind

Explanation: The unassuming star centered in this sky view will one day be our next door stellar neighbor . The faint 9th magnitude red dwarf , currently 63 light-years away in the constellation Ophiucus , was recently discovered to be approaching our Solar System. Known in catalogs of nearby stars as Gliese 710 it is predicted to come within 1 light-year of the Sun ... a million years from now. At that distance this star, presently much too faint to be seen by the naked eye, will blaze at 0.6 magnitude - rivaling the apparent brightness of the mighty red giant Antares . Ultimately Gliese 710 poses no direct collision danger itself although its gravitational influence will likely scatter comets out of the Solar System's reservoir, the Oort cloud , sending some inbound. This future stellar encounter was discovered by researchers Joan Garcia-Sanchez and Robert Preston ( JPL ), and collaborators while studying stars in the solar neighborhood using data from the Hipparcos Astrometry Satellite . The star field shown is based on the Palomar Digitized Sky Survey and is 1/4 degree wide (about half the diameter of the full moon).