Proxima Centauri - the nearest star

A small sky field with the nearest known star, Proxima Centauri, close to the centre. This object is cool and red and it is brighter on the near-infrared image (in the I-filter at 900 nm) to the left than on the red image (in the R-filter at 600 nm) to the right. The rapid motion is easy to perceive. The field measures 10 x 10 arcmin 2 ; North is up and East is left. Reproduced from the Digital Sky Survey (STScI Digitized Sky Survey, (C) 1993, 1994, AURA, Inc. all rights reserved - cf. http://archive.eso.org/dss/dss).