Credit: Digitized Sky Survey 2Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin/Mahdi Zamani

This image of the sky around the bright star Alpha Centauri AB also shows the much fainter red dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. The picture was created from pictures forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The blue halo around Alpha Centauri AB is an artifact of the photographic process, the star is really pale yellow in colour like the Sun. Proxima Centauri appears as a faint red star towards the lower-right of the picture, a labelled version is available here.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1629i/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, None, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License