Wolf 359

I was recently reminded of the song Far Out by Blur in which the star Wolf 359 is mentioned. I remembered that I had located it and taken a shot recently on a solo astrophotography trip to the observatory. It is about 13th magnitude and can be found in the South of Leo. The star itself is a red dwarf, a little bigger than Jupiter, you can see the deep orangey red colour to it in this photo. But more significantly, it is one of the closest stars to our Sun at 7.8 light years away and so its motion causes it to drift across the sky from year to year (~5"). Here, it is moving from top to bottom and slightly to the right, so it will pass close to the star beneath it in the coming few months. A background galaxy (14.5m) can be seen to the lower left, and an even fainter one (17m) above the arrow (Magnitudes found using Aladin).