Hubble Captures Stunning Image of Closest Stellar Neighbor

This article has been updated to note a change.

The Hubble space telescope has captured a stunning new image of Proxima Centauri, our closest stellar neighbor.

Proxima Centauri is located just over four light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. However, despite this short distance and its apparent brightness in the new image, the star is not visible to the naked eye due to a very low average luminosity. In fact, at just one-eighth the mass of the Sun, it's something of a runt.

Occasionally, Proxima Centauri undergoes a sudden increase in brightness, earning it the title of a flare star. This is a result of the convection processes carried out within its body, which make it prone to randomly give off dramatically more light.

These convection processes are also what have set the star on course for a very long life. Believed to be middle-aged, also known as a "main sequence" star, Proxima Centauri is estimated to remain in this state for another 4 trillion years, or roughly 300 times the age of the universe today.

According to NASA, Hubble took the new image using its Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Not included in the picture are its two companions, Alpha Centauri A and B. Together, the three stars make up a triple star system.

The fact that, despite being a stone's throw in cosmic terms, Proxima Centauri still appears as nothing more than a point-like object even when examined through Hubble's powerful lens hints at the immensity of the universe, NASA astronomers note. 

The Hubble space telescope was launched in 1990. Since then, it's orbited the Earth more than 110,000 times, the equivalent of roughly 2.8 billion miles -- or Neptune's average distance from the Sun. During this time, it's collected more than 570,000 images of some 30,000 celestial objects.