Time-Lapse Animation of Proxima Centauri’s Proper Motion

This animation is assembled from 10 years of observations of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun at 4.2 light-years. Proxima has a relatively large proper motion compared to that of more distant background stars. It moves 3.85 arcseconds per year across the sky, which is the angular size of a nickel located 1.5 miles away. The astrometric data used for this visualization were collected between 2000 to 2010 at The Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), located in northern Chile.