Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index HPMS (or High Proper Motion Star) is a temporary name for a star discovered in 2003, with a very large proper motion (5.06 arcsec/year). Only seven stars with such large proper motions are currently known. According to the article announcing its discovery, at only 7.50 light years, HPMS is the third star in order of distance from the Sun, ranking between Barnard's Star and Wolf 359. It appears to be a red dwarf, a class of low temperature and low luminosity stars. This would explain why it was not discovered earlier, since it has an apparent magnitude of only 15.4 (and an absolute magnitude of 18.5). See also: List of nearest stars External link http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0302206 Original article abstract This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.